


Steadfast

by MountainKestrel



Series: The Instant When Love Begins [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Steve Rogers, Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Chronic Illness, Depression, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25806649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainKestrel/pseuds/MountainKestrel
Summary: Steve fell in love with Tony in 1939 after he was sent back in time by Loki.  After Tony disappeared, Steve had to find a way to move on.  It never occurred to him that he would meet Tony Stark again — especially a version of Tony with no memory of having met Steve before.A companion piece toThe Possibilities of Life.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: The Instant When Love Begins [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871038
Comments: 103
Kudos: 210





	1. Time Draining From the Clock

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to [The Possibilities of Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24581905) and probably won’t make a lot of sense unless you read it first. The story and chapter titles come from one of Mary Oliver’s poems, “The Gift,” which you can read [here](http://a-poem-a-day-project.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-gift.html). The series title comes from her poem “Don’t Hesitate,” which you can read [here](https://structureandstyle.org/post/71905788555/dont-hesitate). The current plan is to update every Sunday and for there to be five chapters. It’s rated Teen+ for language (channeling my inner Steve Rogers).
> 
> I’m on Discord as musicalla#7701. I’m always happy to chat if you want to say hi! I spend almost all of my time on the Put on the Suit (18+) Stony server, which is a wonderful, supportive place full of fantastic creators.
> 
> Thanks as always to [RiaRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaRose/pseuds/RiaRose) for her cheer and beta reading! And thanks to [Ven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvengersNewB/pseuds/AvengersNewB) and [Lenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LenkaVittoriaElisse16/pseuds/LenkaVittoriaElisse16) for help with the summary — summaries are the worst!

When it happened, it didn’t make any sense.

Delirious from pneumonia, Tony had spent the day talking to someone named Jarvis, asking him for schematics, to adjust projects, and to run scenarios. He would wave his hands in the air as though conducting an orchestra. He also kept demanding smoothies from a dummy. Every time he looked at Steve — really looked and saw him — he would call Steve Cap and ask why he was here. It broke Steve’s heart every time. He didn’t know how his ma and Bucky had done this for him so many times. It was worse when he fell asleep, because at least if Tony were talking, Steve could make sure he was breathing.

Steve was so exhausted he’d fallen asleep in the chair by the bed at least twice that day. He and Bucky had talked about putting Tony in the bathtub again to break the fever, but it was so cold outside Steve was afraid the water wouldn’t be warm enough. Steve was also running out of excuses to keep Bucky from seeing the blue thing in Tony’s chest that was keeping him alive. 

Desperation loomed over Steve’s every waking moment, and he didn’t know what else to do. When Bucky came home from work that morning, Steve knew he could see it in his eyes. Bucky shooed Steve from the bedroom, demanding that Steve get cleaned up. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed or even washed his face — when he thought about it, he wondered if it had been before Christmas, and they were already a few days into January.

Steve had hoped that 1940 was going to be better, but it wasn’t looking that way.

Steve filled the tub with hot water and sat in it, soaping himself up, when Bucky burst in, pale with fear in his eyes. “What’s wrong?” Steve challenged, getting out of the tub and dripping water all over the floor. He grabbed the towel and wrapped himself in it when Bucky clutched his upper arm.

“You haven’t seen Tony, have you?” Bucky asked, and he sounded a little frantic.

“What? Tony?” Steve answered. “Seen him? What do you mean?”

Bucky hesitated, looking directly into Steve’s eyes. “He’s gone.”

Steve felt the world tip on its axis for a moment, his head swimming. Then it righted itself, and Steve was grateful that Bucky was still holding him up by his arm. “What the hell do you mean, he’s gone? He wasn’t even fit for a haircut, let alone able to get up and walk out.”

Bucky shook Steve gently. “I have no idea what happened to him,” he said. “I left for thirty seconds to grab some water, thinking maybe I could get him to drink some, and when I came back, he was gone.”

Steve felt his knees buckle, and even with Bucky there, he collapsed against him, getting Bucky’s shirt and pajama pants all wet. They stood, chest to chest, as the silence stretched on, the impossibility of Tony’s disappearance hanging between them.

“Let me see,” Steve said, and he pushed away from Bucky. He hurried across the hall back into their apartment on unsteady legs. The bedroom door stood open, and Steve’s bed was empty. The sheets were still damp from Tony’s sweat, and his impression was still there in the rumpled blankets. Steve turned away, not daring to think about what it meant. He charged out of the apartment and down the three flights of stairs in nothing but his towel, before he burst out into the street.

There was freshly fallen snow on the ground, and it continued to fall, the fat flakes swirling around him as the wind blew down the street. Steve shivered from the cold, and he could see there were no fresh footprints leading from the building.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Bucky demanded, appearing behind him. He hustled Steve back into the tenement building despite his protests. “You’re going to catch your death out here all wet in just a towel, you fucking idiot.”

Steve tried to fight Bucky, sure that if he could just stay out there long enough he would figure out where Tony had gone. It wasn’t much of a contest though; Bucky was bigger and stronger, not to mention that he’d been eating and sleeping better. Bucky dragged him back up the stairs as Steve fought him on each landing, looking for Tony on each floor. Once back in their apartment, Bucky made Steve finish drying off and get dressed.

“Maybe one of the neighbors let him in,” Steve said, trying to get past Bucky to go out in the hallway. They struggled again, and Steve managed to push Bucky into the wall next to the door. He reached over, pulling the door open, but Bucky grabbed him around the waist so he couldn’t get out. Bucky’s momentum overbalanced them both, and they tumbled to the floor. Bucky lunged, pinning Steve down. “I need to go ask them,” Steve pleaded, banging his fists on the floor. He then crossed his arms, putting his forehead down onto them so Bucky couldn’t see the tears in his eyes. “Maybe they’ve seen him,” he added, his voice muffled.

“You gotta stop,” Bucky said, not letting Steve up. He shifted around and kicked the door shut with his foot. “I was in the kitchen — there’s absolutely no way he got out without my seeing him unless he climbed down the fire escape —“ Bucky trailed off, and Steve felt more than saw him shake his head. “If I let you up, are you just going to try to leave again?”

“No,” Steve said, and he knew that Bucky could pick out the thickness in his voice from the tears, the despair.

Bucky moved off him, and they both sat on the floor together. Steve didn’t even bother trying to hide his tear-streaked face. Bucky pulled him over, and they sat with shoulders and hips and knees touching. Steve sobbed, unable to stop himself, and Bucky offered him a handkerchief, which Steve used to wipe his face.

“Something was never quite right about him,” Bucky said, not unkindly. 

Steve shook his head. “I can’t explain it, but I don’t think he was from here.” Bucky gave him a look, and Steve rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Not like that,” Steve said. “He had a — thing — in his chest that he said was keeping him alive. He said he had a heart condition. That’s why I wouldn’t let you help clean him up. I was trying to protect him.”

“Well, you protecting him — that I believe,” Bucky said. “What do you mean, a thing?”

Steve got to his feet, and Bucky scrambled to follow, moving to block the door. Instead, Steve went into the drawing room, still sniffling. He rummaged through the milk crate with his sketchbooks and art supplies before pulling out one from the bottom. He flipped it open, searching through the pages then handed it to Bucky.

“The blue isn’t right,” was the only explanation Steve offered.

Bucky looked at the drawing before giving Steve an incredulous look. “He has this thing in his chest, and all you can tell me is _the blue isn’t right_?” Bucky sat down onto the couch heavily, flipping through the sketchbook.

There were at least fifty studies of it. Close-ups with the sharp lines forming a triangle in the center. Some showing just part of it and where it was set into the metal casing. Drawings of Tony himself, usually half-turned with a startled expression, the thing in his chest at an angle. Other sketches of a hand covering it, the light still shining through. Only one was straight on, and it was clearly from after Tony had gotten sick. Steve had drawn him asleep, sweaty and tangled in the sheets, one hand thrown over his chest up by his collarbone, leaving the blue thing completely visible. It was one of the few pictures with color, and the only thing Steve had shaded in was the — whatever it was — in the center of Tony’s chest.

It was a testament to Steve’s drawing skill that it always looked like it glowed, even when the sketches were just pencil or charcoal without color.

Steve sat next to him, ghosting his fingers over the drawing so as not to smear it. “Remember when he showed up? His strange clothes? I think we still have those shoes somewhere. How he didn’t seem to understand basic stuff everyone knows? And all that crazy stuff he talked about with the fever? Maybe he’s not from here.”

Bucky closed the sketchbook and covered his eyes. “Pal, you’ve been reading too many comic books,” was Bucky’s only reply.

“Then how do you explain him just disappearing?” Steve shot back. “I don’t believe he’d just leave.”

“I’m not the one who just ran out in the street in a towel to make sure,” Bucky answered. Steve punched him in the arm, and Bucky just laughed. “I’m sure Mrs. Grady appreciated that, by the way.” He mimicked flipping up the towel, and Steve punched him again before looking away.

Bucky sighed, the levity of the moment draining away as reality set back in. “Look, I don’t know what happened. Maybe it’s one of those miracles your ma always talked about. I think the best we can do is hope that wherever he is, they have something that can make his lungs better. Maybe even his heart.”

Steve took the sketchbook back and opened it back up. They looked at the pictures he’d drawn of Tony together. “I asked him if it would fix my heart,” Steve said after a few minutes of silence as they looked through the drawings. 

“What did he say?” Bucky asked.

“He said that someday they’d come up with something to fix my heart,” Steve said. Bucky looked over at him, his expression full of sympathy. “I told him he was full of shit.”

Bucky burst out laughing at that. “Sounds about right.” Bucky turned to the last drawing, the one of Tony asleep on the bed. “You should’a told him, pal,” he said.

“I did,” Steve answered, and he drew a deep breathing before continuing. “I waited until he was sick. I don’t know if he heard me.”

“I hope he did, Steve. I really do.” Bucky threw his arm around Steve and gave him a squeeze.

They sat together in silence on the couch until Bucky eventually fell asleep, tired from the excitement and his day at work. Steve stretched out alongside him and closed his eyes, feeling the steady rise and fall of Bucky’s chest as he breathed. He hadn’t admitted it earlier, but he was still chilly from his frantic search outside, and Bucky’s warmth seeped through his clothes, slowly warming him.

It wasn’t the same though. Steve wanted the warmth of Tony curled up behind him, having pulled Steve against his chest, his thighs tucked behind Steve’s. He longed for the hum of the mechanical thing in Tony’s chest, the one he could hear whenever Tony was close enough once he knew what he was listening for. He wanted the comfort of the blue light that always shined no matter how dark it was. They’d only slept curled like a few times, but Steve had never felt that comfortable.

Bucky was right — he should have told Tony sooner.

He thought about the last things Tony had said, the last of the confused ramblings earlier that morning. Tony had asked him to watch over him, to keep him safe. He’d insisted that Steve promise — so of course he had. And that had seemed enough, because Tony had visibly relaxed, finally falling into a deep and restful sleep. He was so confident that Steve — scrawny, sickly Steve — would be able to watch over him and keep him safe.

Steve just wished he knew how to do that.

(★)

Steve tried his best to get his life back on track. Between losing his ma in October and Tony in January, he knew it would be easy to just give up. He could still remember sitting in the grass at the Evergreens Cemetery, telling Tony about his ma and how she always got back up. 

Telling Tony about how he didn’t know how to get back up after something like that.

The months after had been a haze, and he mostly remembered following Tony around the apartment. He’d had dreams that he could see that thing in Tony’s chest through his shirts and would wake up in the middle of the night, hoping to see the blue light shining comfortingly in the dark when he looked over at Bucky’s bed.

Then Tony had gotten sick, yanking him out of the haze of grief into a low-level panic that never really left him. He honestly didn’t know how Bucky and his ma had done it for him so many times — sitting at the bedside wondering if today was the day, if today the infection would overwhelm him and finally kill him. Steve had found a reason to live, even if it was only to keep Tony alive through sheer willpower.

But then he’d disappeared.

Steve knew it would have been easy to just stop caring at that point. But the things that Tony had said — both before he had gotten sick, about them finding a cure to his heart problems, and after, about watching over him and keeping him safe — they resonated in Steve’s head, playing over and over again. Tony had referred to him as Cap, and the title seemed to burrow in his thoughts, unable to be dislodged.

What had Tony known that he hadn’t told Steve?

It was that question — that burning feeling that there was something going on that he didn’t understand — that drove Steve to settle back into his old, pre-Tony routine. He decided to just have faith in what Tony had said after the fact, even if he hadn’t believed it at the time. Because, whatever Steve thought about it, Tony had believed it.

He had believed that Steve could save the world, that Steve was someone he could depend on.

Steve held onto that feeling as tightly as he could with both hands. He trusted that all of the things Tony had said were true. Even if they weren’t, that belief was enough to carry him.

It was enough to help him find a way to get back up again.

(★)

When he saw the first advertisement for the Stark Expo, Steve knew that he and Bucky had to go. The advertisement was a poster stapled to a light post, and Steve ripped it off to take home. He studied it the whole way, almost running into multiple people and stationary objects as he hurried back. It was mid-afternoon when Steve got home, and Bucky was still asleep. He left the poster on the kitchen table and waited in the living room for Bucky to get up, staring at the silent radio.

After a few minutes, he went back to the kitchen, grabbed the poster and one of his sketchbooks, and sat back down. He compared the marvels advertised on the poster with the drawings he’d made of the thing in Tony’s chest. None of them resembled that blue glowing disc.

Howard Stark, however, was a completely different matter. His picture was included on the poster, and Steve spent a long time studying the familiar bone structure, the same dark wavy hair, and the same expressive eyes. He wondered if the reproduction did justice to the actual man.

If so, it was one hell of a resemblance.

When Bucky woke up a little later, Steve wordlessly shoved the poster at him as he shuffled sleepily from the bedroom to the toilet. He paused, suddenly more awake. Bucky gestured with the poster, his tone little affronted. “Do you think —?” he started, shaking the piece of paper a little.

“Don’t crumple it,” Steve replied, taking the poster from him before he damaged it. “I don’t know. It’s not exactly him — but it sure looks close enough to be a relative, don’t you think? Especially with the name?”

Bucky shook his head, more in disbelief than disagreement. “Depends how close the picture is,” he said, running a hand through his short hair. “But you know that.” He moved into the kitchen, yelling over his shoulder, “Guess we have to go and see for ourselves.”

Steve remained on the couch and smoothed out the wrinkles in the poster. “Guess so,” he said quietly to himself.

A knock came on the door while Bucky was in the communal bathroom in the hallway. Steve opened it to find an older man there, wearing an olive drab dress uniform for the Army. He looked down at Steve, who saw his expression twist into disapproval before settling into confusion. “James Barnes?” he asked, brandishing a letter.

Steve felt his heart drop. “He’s getting cleaned up,” he answered slowly. “Let me go get him for you. You can wait in here,” he added as an afterthought, gesturing for the man to go in the kitchen. He got a sharp nod in return before Steve moved past him into the hall.

He tapped on the door before pushing it open. Bucky had his pants but no shirt, and he looked up in surprise at Steve’s appearance. “There’s a guy here for you,” Steve said, and he knew his reluctance was clear on his face. Bucky cocked his head to the side in confusion before pulling his undershirt on over his head. “From the draft board,” he clarified.

“Oh,” was all Bucky said in response as his head popped through the neck of his shirt, scattering water droplets from his wet hair everywhere. “I guess I’m not 2B any more.” He ran a hand through his hair before adding some pomade. 

“He said he has a letter to give you,” Steve answered with a shrug.

Bucky gave him a knowing look through the mirror. “I assume it’s not because I suddenly don’t qualify any more,” he said drily. “They must have pulled my number and decided I’m more use in Europe than at the Navy Yard.”

“If you go, I’m going,” Steve said, setting his shoulders and standing up to his full height.

“I don’t think you get a say in that, pal,” Bucky shrugged, pushing past Steve.

“If they need guys so badly they’re pulling them off the Navy Yard,” Steve started, but Bucky cut him off.

“You signed up the same day I did, after they bombed Hawaii,” Bucky said, sticking his finger into Steve’s chest. “I saw the 4F they stamped on your card.” He turned to stalk down the hallway back towards the apartment.

“I have no right to do any less than any other man for my country,” Steve yelled after him.

Bucky turned just before he got to the door to the apartment. “Funny,” he said, his soft voice carrying back to Steve in the quiet hallway, “you never used to talk like this before your ma died and Tony disappeared.”

Steve reeled back, feeling the blow as if Bucky had physically struck him. He wanted to shout a thousand things back at Bucky: that the US hadn’t been at war then; that he’d been able to see a future for himself when he looked at Tony; that he had an obligation to defend his country from bullies who thought they could take whatever they wanted without any fear of consequences.

But the part that stung the most was that Bucky was at least partially right, even if Steve would never admit it to him: with his ma and Tony gone and Bucky off to who knows where, there was nothing left for him here.

Even when he had nothing, he’d had Bucky. Bucky, who helped him pick up the pieces every time his life was in ruins. Bucky, who helped him up and cleaned him off when he got his ass kicked in parking lots and alleys, behind diners and movie theaters.

But now? He wouldn’t even have Bucky.

He shook his head before storming back into the apartment. The man in the uniform had taken off his hat and tucked it under his arm, the distaste back on his face at Steve’s interruption. “As I was saying,” he said in a haughty tone, “you’ll get your orders in two weeks. You have until then to get your affairs in order. If you don’t present to the draft board at that time, you will be considered AWOL, and the military police will take you in for desertion. I suggest you show up.”

Bucky clicked his heels together, pulling himself up to his full height, throwing a jaunty salute, complete with a smirk. “Sir, yes sir,” he said.

The draft board official shifted his gaze from Bucky to Steve and back again slowly, as if inspecting something he knew would be particularly difficult to get off his shoe while spit-shining it that evening. “Good luck, soldier,” he said finally, brushing past Steve and out the apartment door.

“I don’t think he likes you much,” Steve said. 

“I don’t think it’s me, but the feeling is mutual. He’s a little man with a little power.” Bucky threw the letter on the table before looking at Steve. “You sure you don’t recognize him? He seems like the kind of guy who’s kicked your ass before.”

“I definitely recognize his type.”

Steve drew a deep breath to resume the argument in the hallway, but Bucky turned away, bracing both of his fists on the table, letting his head drop and his shoulders slump. “Can we just — not tonight, Steve?” he asked quietly. “I have to go to work, and then I have to figure out a way to tell my parents and sisters, and I just — I just don’t have the energy for this tonight.”

Steve saw his shoulders shake a little, and he walked over to put a hand between Bucky’s shoulder blades, gently rubbing there. “He said the Navy Yard already knows — they told them earlier today. I have one more week there, and then another week to get my affairs in order,” he continued, echoing the phrase the official had used. Bucky’s shoulders slumped down, and he scrubbed a hand over his face, the other still braced on the table.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve said. Bucky turned suddenly and pulled Steve into a tight hug. Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky, feeling the trembling in Bucky’s chest and arms. Bucky’s breath came hot where he’d buried his face into Steve’s shoulder. Just as suddenly, he released Steve, who faltered from the sudden absence of his friend in his arms.

“I have to go get ready for work,” he mumbled, his voice rough with unspoken emotion, as he left the kitchen, running a hand through his hair.

Steve watched him go, wondering what in the hell they were going to do.

(★)  
  
The next two weeks passed in a flurry of activity. Steve went to six separate draft boards with a new address. Each time, he’d barely get past the first diagnosis on his medical history before his form was taken and stamped with 4F. He kept his small pile of rejection forms hidden from Bucky.

The expo was pushed from Steve’s mind until the day Bucky got his orders. Bucky told him about the 107th in the alley after driving off the jerk from the movies theater and promised Steve a visit to the future with the two girls Bucky had found for the evening.

Steve tried to have a good night for Bucky that night — he really did. But seeing Howard Stark on the stage only made him ache for Tony, remembering the showmanship that he’d brought to his handyman business. The flying car seemed like a publicity stunt after the beautiful blue light that had shown from Tony’s chest, and Steve would have done a lot more than try his hand at joining the Army one last time to get away from the memories that threatened to overwhelm him after watching Stark on stage.

He wasn’t sure the argument with Bucky had been worth it though.

Steve made his way home after meeting Dr. Erskine, head and heart heavy as he tried to sort through the day. He was still sore from his encounter in the alley, and he had scrapes over his arms from where he’d been knocked down. He stripped out of his jacket and shirt, and the specter of Tony seemed to follow Steve around the apartment as he got cleaned up. His chest ached both from the fight and the emotion, and Steve couldn’t help but wonder what Tony would have thought of it all — Bucky off to war with the 107th, the chance Dr. Erskine had offered.

Tony’s words came back to him — _Some day, Steve, they’ll find a cure for what you have — But this isn’t it_ — and not for the first time, Steve wondered what Tony had known. Was this what Tony meant? This experimental program being run through the military?

Steve changed into an undershirt and pajama pants and lay down on the couch. He watched the lights through the window play over the ceiling, and the silence was oppressive. He thought about turning on the radio, but he hadn’t touched it since Tony disappeared. Somehow, it seemed too much, between his ma giving it to him and Tony fixing it. He could hear traffic pass on the street below, the voices of people walking the street drifting up.

It all made him feel so terribly alone.

Bucky arrived sometime after midnight, his hat off-kilter and his tie loose, his jacket partially off one shoulder, the dress shirt buttoned incorrectly with the tails only half-tucked into his pants. Steve could tell he was drunk by the slow, deliberate steps Bucky took, trying his best to be quiet and not wake Steve.

Bucky tried to undress in the kitchen, fumbling with the buttons on his jacket as Steve watched from the next room. He sighed and got up to help, making Bucky startle when he silently appeared in the kitchen.

“Let me help, you idiot,” Steve said, moving into Bucky’s space. He could feel Bucky’s breath in his hair as he breathed above him, smell the alcohol with each exhalation. Steve gently undid his belt and helped get his jacket off, throwing it over the back of one of the chairs so it wouldn’t wrinkle. He untied Bucky’s tie and unbuttoned Bucky’s dress shirt, pulling it off his shoulders, before draping them over the jacket. He supported Bucky as he pulled off his shoes. He slid Bucky’s pants off, adding them to the other clothes. It must have been an evening for ghosts, because the uniform seemed like a third person in the room, silently observing them.

Bucky was left in his undershirt, boxers, and socks, his hat discarded onto the table. He swayed as he reached out with an unsteady hand, sweeping Steve’s blond hair off his forehead. Bucky’s hot breath stirred his hair, the smell the beer still there, as well as the faint whiff of cologne and sweat now that he’d stripped out of the uniform.

“I know about your stack of 4Fs,” Bucky said quietly.

Steve sighed and moved out of Bucky’s reach, running a hand through his own hair. “I have no right to do any less —“ 

“I know, Steve,” Bucky cut him off, his words slurring a little. He shoved past Steve unsteadily and collapsed on the couch, which was still warm from Steve’s body. “I have orders to ship out to Europe tomorrow, and you’re still 4F. You’d do anything to go, and I don’t want to. I get it — you’re braver than I am. You always were.”

It felt like all of the air in Steve's body was pulled out at Bucky’s statement, so calm and matter of fact, and Steve came to stand in the doorway, bracing himself against the frame. “What did you say?”

Bucky dropped his face into his hands, scrubbing his fingers up into his hair. “I get it, pal. You beat up bullies in alleys for bein’ jerks at the movies, even when you know you can’t win. You help strangers when you barely have enough on your own. Hell, you even shared your popcorn with that dame tonight, even though she clearly wanted nothin’ to do with you.”

Steve came further into the room as though magnetically pulled to Bucky. “You’ve fought your way back from bein’ half dead from pneumonia more times than I can count, and you still finished high school with better grades than I did. And you went to Auburndale for as long as you could, until you couldn’t afford it anymore,” Bucky continued.

He stopped, lifting his face up, and in the streetlights coming in from the window, Steve could see the wetness on his cheeks. He wiped his face one-handed. “You even put your life back together you lost your — after Tony disappeared.

“You’re the bravest son of a bitch I know,” Bucky said, and his voice broke at the end.

“Bucky —“ Steve was at a loss. He sat down beside Bucky and threw his arm around his shoulder. Bucky leaned into him, his head on Steve’s shoulder. From there, Steve could smell the pomade in his hair, feel his breath as it rippled across the hairs on his arm. The dampness from Bucky’s tears soaked into his shirt.

“Meeting you was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Steve finally said.

“I don’t think I’ve gone more than two days since then without seeing you.” Bucky shifted to sit up, brushing at his face with his hands. His voice was thick from the crying, still soft at the edges and indistinct from the alcohol. “I’m with you ’til the end of the line, pal, but what if this is it?”

“It’s not,” Steve answered. “Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that. I don’t care where you go or what happens to you, I’ll find you. You hear me, you goddamn punk? This isn’t it for us.”

Bucky drew a deep breath and settled back down onto the couch. “You’d better be right,” was all he said before he relaxed, his face pressed into Steve’s thigh.

Bucky slept heavily on the couch for the rest of the night, curled into Steve. At dawn, he woke up. Steve watched in silence as he got ready, carefully washing up and shaving, his eyes darting to watch Steve in the mirror. Steve pressed his shirt and tie while he was getting ready and helped him dress, a reversal of what they had done the night before.

Steve walked with him to the rail station, where a cluster of other men dressed in drab olive loitered. Bucky lifted his chin, his hat at a jaunty angle. Steve found himself looking around, but when Bucky caught his eye, he just shook his head. “I asked them not to come,” was the only explanation he offered.

The train finally arrived, and all of the men began saying their last good-byes: hugging sweethearts and mothers; fathers standing stoically, only showing their emotion in their rigid stances; younger siblings with tears in their eyes, only certain that everyone was upset even if they didn’t understand why. There were promises made to write, and to send packages, and to come home.

Bucky stood transfixed, breathing slowly, as he watched the smoke gather around the engine. Steve could see he was pale, and he would have bet good money his hands were shaking, which is why Bucky had them shoved in his pockets. Bucky turned, looking down at Steve, and it was only for a moment that Bucky let Steve see the flash of panic, the fear that had followed him home in the dark hours earlier that morning. Then it was gone, and Bucky pulled off his hat, wiping a small amount of sweat from his forehead with his jacket sleeve before replacing it.

“‘Til the end of the line,” Bucky said, but Steve could see he didn’t believe it, at least not in that moment.

Steve steeled himself and gave Bucky a grin, willing everything he had into it. “’Til the end of the line,” he echoed, more confidently than Bucky had. “But this ain’t it.”

Bucky smiled back, hesitant at first, before it bloomed into the cocky smile Steve was used to. Steve pulled him into a hug, his arms trembling from how hard he gripped Bucky, then released him. Bucky walked to the train, giving Steve a salute before stepping inside.

The train pulled away from the station, and Steve watched until he couldn’t see it any more. He thought of the now empty apartment, and the form Dr. Erskine had given him stamped 1A.

He hoped Bucky was right — that he was brave enough.

(★)

Training at Camp LeHigh was the hardest thing Steve had ever done. It started with standing in the line and seeing exactly what he was up against. He appreciated Agent Carter’s response to Hodge, but it certainly didn’t help the harassment he received. His stuff would constantly disappear only to be found in the most compromising locations. He’d tried to stake out a bunk in one of the corners of the barracks, but he was forced to move to one in the middle. He was alternately humiliated, sabotaged, or ignored.

And despite how he felt about being in the Army, his body struggled to rise to the challenge. He had asthma attacks and episodes of atrial fibrillation from the exertion. He would struggle to breathe or have crushing chest pain during the runs or be so exhausted at night he had a hard time falling asleep. 

On his bunk in the barracks, in the middle of the night when he was surrounded by the susurrus of the other men breathing in their sleep, he despaired about being able to make it through the training. There were glimmers of hope: getting the flag, the grenade, never giving up. But those seemed few and far between when compared to his ongoing failures: the obstacle course, morning calisthenics, carrying a pack, running. He could feel Dr. Erskine’s eyes follow him, see the conversations he had with Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter, sense the expectation that he live up to the opportunity he’d been given. He wanted to take their clipboards and throw them away. He wanted to point out that Hodge was a bully, just for the “right” reasons; that Bolton was lazy; that Dickenson had probably never had an original thought of his own and just did whatever he was told; that McNally was a compulsive liar.

But Steve knew what that was. It was simply deflection. He was painfully aware — often literally — of his own shortcomings, and pointing out the shortcomings of others didn’t change any of that. So he thought of Bucky and that last night together. Bucky’s painful admission about Steve reverberated within him, and he was determined to live up to how his best friend saw him. He knew it was unlikely, but Steve wanted to do everything within his power to get to Europe and protect Bucky the way that Buck= had for him so many times before.

He believed that, by sheer determination, he could keep Bucky safe and get him home again.

He had to. The alternative was too awful for him to contemplate.

And sometimes, so deep into the night he knew it was only a short time before the sky started to lighten again in the east, heralding the arrival of morning, he thought of Tony. Steve would think about the bravery it had taken for Tony to get that thing implanted in his chest, wondering what kind of terrible injury could cause shrapnel to be embedded so far into his chest that he needed such a thing. He’d wonder where Tony had come from and if he’d gone back there. He would close his eyes, lying on the narrow bunk, and think of Tony pulling him into his chest: the warm comfort of his body, the support of his knees behind Steve’s, the warm metal of the disk pressing into his back.

Usually with that came the terror of their last days together, the fear that sat like a weight in his chest as Tony struggled to breath, his lips a faint blue and the air moving in and out with a hollow rattle that echoed throughout the room. He remembered seeing Tony in the tub that last time, surreptitiously enjoying the long lines of Tony’s body, the wiry muscle beneath the olive skin, the contrast of his dark hair, the beautiful blue of the disc in his chest with the silver casing around it. Even sick, he had been so beautiful.

He held on to what Tony had told him, that some day there would be a cure for his heart, that even if that disc couldn’t help Steve, something else would. He had to believe it, hold onto it as tightly as he could because, between that, Tony, and Bucky, he had nothing else left to carry him through.

Steve was still struggling to believe he’d been chosen when Dr. Erskine sat him down the night before his procedure to talk with him. There had been music playing from one of the other barracks, and Steve almost couldn’t take the sound. It reminded him too much of Tony and his ma, and it felt like the failures of his life were pressing in, crowding around him until he doubted everything, especially his ability to live up to Dr. Erskine’s expectations.

The music played on into the night, long after Dr. Erskine had left. Steve lay on the bunk, alone in the barracks, thinking about what Dr. Erskine had said about understanding the value of compassion. The ghosts from his past seemed to surround him. He thought of his ma, always getting up and defying his father, fiercely beautiful with her hair in disarray and blood on her lip. He’d always thought of her as Scáthach, blond hair flying and blue fire in her eyes, who had trained Cú Chulainn, the greatest knight of the Red Branch. She had fought her own war in Ireland, forced to flee after the Easter Rising. He wondered what she would think of this, of her small, sick son taking this chance.

He thought of Bucky and his quiet constancy. He’d always put on a show for the girls he met or his other friends. But at home, when it was just the two of them, he was quieter and more comfortable. The showman slipped away, leaving a version of Bucky that Steve often wondered if only he got to see. It was the version of Bucky who pulled him out of fights and helped him get out of his own head. It was the kind of love he had originally thought was only reserved for romances: unwavering, unquestioning, always supportive. It was the Bucky who knew about the stack of 4Fs, who knew it could very well kill Steve, but instead of berating Steve for his stubbornness or his stupidity talked to Steve about his bravery.

And finally, Steve thought of Tony. He thought of the things Tony had said, when he was sick and didn’t know what he was saying. Of Steve saving the world, of his watching over Tony and protecting him. He’d never understood what Tony was seeing then, but he could see the conviction in Tony’s eyes, that Tony had believed it with every fiber of his being.

Steve closed his eyes and saw blue: the brilliant blue of his ma’s eyes that he saw in his own eyes every day; the stormy blue-gray of Bucky’s eyes that usually watched him through the mirror while he was getting ready, a soft, fond grin on his face; the blue of the disc in Tony’s chest.

He fell asleep, surrounded and protected by the three loves of his life, each different: talismans against anything that could go wrong tomorrow, when Steve’s entire life would change.

(★)

Everything ground to a stop for Steve when Dr. Erskine asked Mr. Stark if he was ready.

All of the stress of the day, the anxiety of the experimental procedure and everything he’d had to do, every hoop he’d had to jump through ramped up when he looked over to see a face that looked both so very familiar and so very different at the same time. The hair color was the same, but Howard’s lacked the wave of Tony’s. They had the same bone structure and eyes, and Steve had a hard time tearing his own gaze away. Howard’s mouth lifted up at the corner in a smirk, like he was laughing at a private joke, and Steve felt like he’d taken a punch to the gut. It was like the ghost of Tony had followed him from the barracks where he’d haunted Steve the night before and taken on corporal form based only on a description of what Tony looked like. The rough features were the same, and many of them were very close — but it wasn’t quite right. 

Whoever Howard Stark was, however, he clearly was related to Tony.

“Are you okay?” Howard asked, peering down at Steve where he was lying on the gantry of Dr. Erskine’s capsule. “You don’t look so hot, pal.”

Steve felt his mouth open and close, unable to produce any sounds. Finally, he managed to blurt out, “Do you have family in Iowa?”

“Iowa?” Howard echoed, his eyebrows climbing up on his forehead. “What the hell’s in Iowa?” He paused, giving the question a little more consideration — probably a lot more thought than the question really deserved, Steve though a little hysterically — before adding, “I’m pretty sure my mama took one look at the Hudson and told my father she wasn’t going any further west.”

“Can’t say I blame her,” Steve found himself saying. It was like he was having an out-of-body experience, and he had no control over anything that was happening, least of all his body or anything he thought or did. How did Howard and Tony Stark fit together? Did Howard know where Tony had gone?

Had Howard built the thing in Tony’s chest?

“Do you have any relatives named Tony?” Steve squirmed on the gantry, suddenly anxious. He wanted to scream at everyone to stop what they were doing, to slow the bustle of work around him for Dr. Erskine’s experiment so he could put the pieces together. There was something — a piece of information, something he’d failed to pick up on — just outside the edge of his awareness, and he knew that if he could figure out what that was, everything else would fall into place: where Tony had come from, the blue disc in his chest, how he had disappeared into thin air.

Whether he had died from the pneumonia.

But everything continued on around him. Howard cocked his head to the side, his eyebrows pulling down and together, and Steve knew from his expression that the answer would be no. In that moment, everything froze. A silence settled over him, deafening in the absence of all the sound that had been there the instant before. Steve had enough time to take a breath before it all snapped back into place, the noise and activity roaring back so abruptly he flinched.

“No, pal,” Howard said, his tone a little stilted. “Why do you ask?”

Steve didn’t want to answer. If Howard didn’t know, Steve didn’t want to share Tony with him, as though doing so would force Steve to give away part of his memory of Tony, a piece he could never get back. “No reason,” Steve forced himself to say.

Howard watched him, his eyes narrowed for a moment before turning away, and jumped down to the machine that ran alongside the platform on which Dr. Erskine’s capsule sat.

Steve released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and felt winded, like he was back at Camp LeHigh trying to run around the track. The rest of the setup passed in a blur for Steve, and before he knew it, the serum was injected, and the capsule was closed.

The pain was the worst thing he had ever felt. It burned through every muscle down to his bones, searing through him like a wildfire. He heard screaming, and it took a moment for him to realize he was making that sound. He felt ashamed, knowing he wanted to remain silent and stoic in the face of getting what he’d always wanted — a chance to make a difference, to be allowed to do the things he knew he was capable of.

He saw the face of his ma, blood on her face and eyes defiant. But it wasn’t the face he recognized, with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a jaded look from living on the margins with a husband who preferred drinking over working. It was a younger version, how she must have looked on Easter morning, 1916, with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Her blond hair escaping from her braid, her blue eyes fiery and unyielding, the expression she must have worn defending the Post Office with her friends and fellow patriots, uncompromising in the face of an indifferent British government. It was an expression of stubbornness he had seen on his own face many times, the expression that said this is the hill she was willing to die on. It was the expression he’d seen on her face every time his father had taken a swipe at her, every time she got back up.

The look she had every time she’d been told to move and instead demanded that the other person move instead.

He saw the look of fear on Bucky’s face as he boarded the train, the vulnerability when he admitted that he thought Steve was braver. The look of pride Bucky always tried to conceal when he found Steve in yet another alley, knocked down in the dirt by another bully but still unwilling to give up. He saw the flash of relief in Bucky’s eyes when Steve had said this wasn’t it — this wasn’t the end of the line.

He saw the look in Tony’s eyes, staring at another Steve, one that he could only see. The person he called Cap, who saved the world and protected those who couldn’t always protect themselves, the one he had total faith in. He saw the heartbreak in Tony’s eyes when he told Steve the blue disc that had saved his life couldn’t save Steve’s but in the next breath promised that something would come along that would cure him.

Even with Steve’s eyes closed, he could feel them standing close to him, cheering him on, giving him the strength to endure another few minutes. He felt his ma’s hand on his head in benediction, praying for him in Gaelic, her murmuring lilt soothing, her lips brushing over his forehead as her words stirred his hair. He felt Bucky’s hands on his back, his palms hot over the skin on his shoulders, praying for him in English, his breath moving over the skin on his neck. And he felt Tony’s hand over his heart, his thin, clever fingers gently splayed out over his sternum, feeling like metal against his skin. Blue crept in at the edges of his vision, and he heard Tony whisper, “You can do this all day.”

The capsule opened, and Steve stumbled out, almost falling. His voice was hoarse and his throat sore, and he felt sweat all over his body, the muscles trembling and breath coming fast. People swarmed around him, but he felt removed, completely separate from them as though his ma, Bucky, and Tony surrounded him, keeping them at arm’s length.

At least until the explosion.

After that, it was like his body was running independently from his mind. All the things he’d ever dreamed of doing came without a struggle. It wasn’t until the Hydra agent had committed suicide that Steve stopped and considered what had happened.

He didn’t hurt.

He could breath easily.

His heart didn’t feel like it was going to beat out of his chest.

He was never going to be beaten up in an alley again or be told what he could and couldn’t do.

He looked up, elated, only to realize he was alone. There was no one to celebrate with, no one who had known the struggles that had led up to this moment. No one who had seen his lows and helped him through them. No one who had seen the days when he could barely drag himself back up again. It was just him and the body of the German spy.

It had never occurred to him that getting what he’d always wanted might be more complicated than he thought.

Afterwards, the bond show was a pretty bitter pill to swallow, all things considered. Steve felt tricked by Senator Brandt and abandoned by Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter. The death of Dr. Erskine was also harder to take than Steve had expected, because he was the only person who had seen the potential in Steve, a potential that he sometimes felt like even Bucky had questioned.

He thought a lot about what Tony had said about his heart and wondered if this is what he’d meant. The days were empty, and without anything else to do, Steve’s thoughts went in circles: if it was, then this was a pretty poor use of the gift Dr. Erskine had given him. If it wasn’t, then what had Tony meant? If it was, how in the hell had Tony known? If it wasn’t, then what else was in store for Steve? Surely this wasn’t it, and around and around he went, feeling that he was meant for more than this.

Steve would have never gone so far as to say he was relieved to hear about Bucky and the rest of the 107th, but it did make some things much clearer for him. Ultimately, he didn’t need Agent Carter’s urging about Dr. Erskine’s intentions — he knew what he needed to do. _Finally_ the path forward was obvious: either he would find what was left of Bucky’s unit or he wouldn’t. The consequences of either outcome didn’t really matter — he would never be able to live with himself if he didn’t try. It was only later, on the march back, that the potential ramifications of his decision really became apparent to him. He’d defied orders and abandoned his post, even if it was a stupid post. He was AWOL, and he could be court-martialed for it. But Bucky was beside him again, and that was enough, especially when he led the cheer for Captain America back at camp.

It wasn’t the end of the line.

Despite being in the middle of the deadliest war in human history, Steve found himself content to the point where he almost felt guilty about it. He had a purpose, and he could finally do all of the things his mind had wanted but his body had been unable to do. And every time someone called him Cap, he thought of Tony and what he’d said when he was delirious with fever. He looked for Tony; in villages and other units, on farms and in pubs, at strategy meetings and on the battlefield. He never found him, but Tony’s words stayed with him. Steve knew — he knew _without a single doubt_ — that somehow Tony had known about all of this: his multiple attempts to join the war, Dr. Erskine and the super soldier serum, Howard Stark, the bond show, Schmidt and Zola and the war, but most importantly about Captain America. Steve didn’t understand how Tony had known — Steve just knew he had.

In addition to getting Bucky back, Steve also gained the Howling Commandos. His loyalty to his men was absolute, and his dedication to helping win the war was just as solid. He felt like he was born for this, and each mission the Howling Commandos completed pushed the Allies closer to the end of the war. Victory seemed inevitable. It was only a matter of time.

And then Bucky fell from the train.

Steve faltered under the weight of that loss, never to recover. He stopped sleeping and barely ate, letting the serum carry him through in a haze that never seemed to lift. Zola’s intel about the Red Skull was vital to winning the war, but Steve couldn’t even bring himself to care. One thought consumed him: _stop the Red Skull_. There was nothing after that, no plan, no life to go home to, no getting back to normal. Not even the thought of a relationship with Agent Carter was enough to think beyond the assault on the Red Skull’s base. That’s all there was for Steve: the mission to take out Schmidt and stop Hydra. After that — well, there wasn’t anything after.

Steve knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to the apartment he’d shared with Bucky and later Tony. He would never be able to draw at his drafting table while Bucky slept in the bedroom again. He would never be able to sit at the table where Tony had told him his ma had died. He would never be able to sleep in the bed where Tony had disappeared or sit on the couch where Bucky had cried before shipping out.

The Red Skull was an opportunity, and Steve was going to take it.

Steve relished every hit on the Valkyrie, every punch he took from Schmidt. The pain helped him to focus, penetrating the haze that Bucky’s death had left behind. The lack of sleep had finally overwhelmed the serum, and Steve found himself alternating between feeling like he was back in Brooklyn getting the shit kicked out of him somewhere and moving through a fog where everything was indistinct and ultimately not very important. It was only when the heavens opened up and Schmidt dissolved into the stars, when the Tesseract burnt through the floor of the Valkyrie and fell into the ocean that the world came back into focus and stayed there, instead of fading into gray.

He knew what he needed to do.

In the end, it was easier than he had expected it. Steve heard the tears in Agent Carter’s voice, her own despair echoing through him and amplifying his own. When he pointed the nose of the Valkyrie towards the water, his stomach swooped and dropped with the plane. A calm spread over him as the blue of the water and the ice filled the canopy.

Steve’s last thought was that it was the exact shade of the disc in Tony’s chest, and the hope that he would see Tony again bloomed within him as he lost consciousness.


	2. Be Slow if You Must

Steve wasn’t supposed to be awake.

He should have died on the Valkyrie, not been frozen and recovered only to wake up in 2012. The sounds and lights from Times Square had been overwhelming, and Steve had blinked at Director Fury, unable to say anything more than he’d had a date. But the apartment they’d given him in Brooklyn — it was even worse than the noise and chaos of Manhattan. Someone had clearly spent a lot of time trying to make it comfortable for him. It was laid out in railroad fashion, much like his tenement apartment, but everything was just _wrong_. The paint colors seemed off, the noise of the city was wrong, even the air smelled differently. The fabric of his clothing was too soft, and none of it fit correctly because none of it had been tailored.

But the most shocking things were the files Shield had given him. The first he’d looked through was the file for Peggy, and he was proud of her for her long career. She had built Shield from the ground up with Phillips and Stark, making it into an organization she could be proud of. He was glad that she’d made herself a space in the world she had come to love, doing work that she excelled at. 

Each of the Howling Commandos’ files told a similar story. They had all survived the rest of the war, each going on to careers and families back at home. None of them was still alive, but Steve was happy to know that something good had come of the war, that they had all built legacies that still lived on.

Howard’s file had been next, and, while his death in 1994 sounded like it had been tragic, Steve was also proud of him for building Stark Industries into a premier organization. Maybe he never did perfect that flying car, but between Shield and SI, his life too had been successful and fulfilling.

The next file was Tony Stark’s, and Steve had trouble making himself open it. The picture attached to the bio form on the front showed a face that Steve was intimately familiar with, although the last time he’d seen it, it had been gaunt from the lost weight and prolonged infection. The birthday mocked him: May 29, 1970. Somehow, Tony had appeared in Brooklyn 31 years before he had even been born, only to disappear about nine months later. Not only that — apparently Steve had known his grandparents peripherally through Bucky; his grandfather had tailored some of Steve’s clothes, and he’d even held Tony’s mother as a baby while waiting to get some pants taken in.

The bio form even helpfully named the thing in Tony’s chest as a miniaturized arc reactor. It included a picture of the metal armor called the Iron Man suit. Steve spent hours looking at the form, tracing the outlines of the figures in the pictures, unable to open the file. He knew they were the same person — they had to be. After seeing the Tesseract rip open the heavens and tear Schmidt away, Steve knew that anything was possible — but time travel? Steve’s mind rebelled against the concept even as he was aware he hardly knew enough to have an opinion. It was also hard to maintain his skepticism knowing that he himself had been born in 1918 and had survived being frozen for almost 70 years.

Tony would have known how it was possible, and he would probably have been willing to explain it to Steve. But he couldn’t ask Tony.

Steve considered calling him, but he discarded the idea almost as soon as it occurred to him. Had Tony even travelled back to 1939 yet? Would he even make it back to 2012 after he disappeared from Steve’s bed in 1940? Had Shield notified him that Steve had been found, that he was alive and awake?

Would Tony even care?

It had been 6 years — well, 6 years, give or take another 60 — and even Steve began to wonder if what he’d felt so strongly was one-sided. Everything now was so overwhelming, so difficult — so pointless. He’d gone into the ice with the intention of not waking up again, because without Bucky or Tony, with his ma buried 6 years ago, there was nothing to wake up to.

But this? This was so much worse that going back to the empty apartment, the silent radio, the empty bed across the room.

With nowhere to be and nothing to do, he found himself at an outside cafe across the street from Grand Central Station more often than not, sketching out the lines of Stark Tower. Part of him — a crazy part, he readily admitted — thought about just walking into the lobby and asking to see Tony. But it was no less crazy than waking up to a future where everything was unrecognizable and he was a legend, a superhero — most easily recognized in comic books and movies, TV shows and toys, biographies and footnotes in histories about World War II.

He didn’t even recognize himself in these versions. The only thing they seemed to get right was his friendship with Bucky, and even that seemed sensationalized and tawdry. There was no mention of the times Bucky had rolled his eyes as he’d dragged Steve up from the dirt, of their tacit agreement as Bucky tried to set him up with girls to cover for his less acceptable attractions, of their last argument at the enlistment center at the Stark Expo before he stopped being Steve Rogers and became Captain America.

There was certainly no mention of their last night together before Bucky left for Europe, of the unspoken fears on both sides as Bucky got on that train.

Steve wouldn’t admit it, but he was relieved when Fury showed up at the gym. Fury gave him another file folder, another stack of papers, and Steve found weariness and irritation quickly welling up to replace the relief when he saw the picture of the Tesseract tucked in the pages. Had the world learned _nothing_ in the 70 years he’d been frozen? Had all those men died in vain on the fields of Europe in the 40s? 

What the hell were they even fighting for? It was always important, so incredibly important, so that someone somewhere could have a little more power, pretending to control the Tesseract. Did that person even care who died? Did it matter that everyone else had to give up something so that one person could have a little more power? A power so incomprehensible it could tear open the heavens and destroy a person in mere seconds, that it could melt through metal and survive being dropped thousands of feet into the ocean?

But Steve knew there wasn’t really a chance he would refuse. Anything was better than the silent apartment, the file he couldn’t open, the world he didn’t understand. At least it was a direction, something to move towards, and that was better than the nothing he’d woken up to, the empty life he’d been living since then.

(★)

When Tony landed the Iron Man suit in Stuttgart, Steve had a hard time keeping his eyes off the arc reactor. The glass panel in the chest plate seemed to block the blue haze of the light he remembered so clearly, and Steve wanted to dismantle it to inspect the disc below. Was it the same one? Or was this a different version? The picture on the front of Tony’s Shield file was indistinct with a round cutout on the chest plate, but this armor had clearly been upgraded, the cutout now triangular. Steve forced himself to look away, to not stare, especially with Loki nearby, watching everything they did. He flexed his hands in his gloves, feeling the leather move over his skin, as he tried to forget how Tony’s warm hand had felt over his, the metal casing warm under his fingertips, the smooth glass. When he closed his eyes, he still saw the way the blue light came up through his fingers.

He could still see the light in Tony’s chest the night he’d turned twenty-one, watching it until he’d fallen asleep, only to wake up in Tony’s arms, pressed with his back against Tony’s chest.

It became clear very quickly on the Quinjet that Tony didn’t know him, didn’t remember their time in Brooklyn together. There was no recognition from Tony at all — no glimmer of humor, no flash of understanding. He cracked jokes but was all business underneath the humor. Steve could tell that he was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t tell why. It got even worse back on the Helicarrier. Steve alternated between feeling overjoyed at seeing for himself that Tony was alive and apparently well and despondent about the loss all over again, given Tony’s aloof demeanor. He tried to throw out references to things Tony would have known from their time together in the Depression, even knowing that Tony wouldn’t pick up on them. All he got for commenting on Fury’s flying monkeys comment was an eye-roll, even though they had seen _The Wizard of Oz_ together in a Brooklyn movie theater in September 1939.

Something about this version of Tony didn’t seem right to Steve either. He was more brittle, more defensive. There was a big difference between the man Steve had found scraped up in an alley and this one. Steve could sense the discomfort, the anxiety that seemed to run through him like a live wire, especially when they interacted. It wound Steve up too, as much as he tried to not to react to it. But something was clearly bothering Tony, and that always got Steve going, even that first time he’d met Tony so long ago.

In hindsight, there was a certain inevitability about the escalation in the lab. Tony was pushing all of Steve’s buttons, and Steve was doing it right back because he didn’t know how to do anything else. The comment about everything special about him coming out of a bottle — well, even if this version of Tony wasn’t the same as the one he’d met in 1939, he still instinctively knew where to hit Steve where it hurt the most.

It was easier with a common goal: the need to get engine 3 back online. Steve didn’t have to think about it, didn’t have to think about how this Tony was different from his Tony. He could focus on the task at hand. It was like battle, like working with the Howling Commandos again, which, Steve had as a passing thought as he verified the relays were intact, was only a few weeks ago for him.

He felt something loosen a little in his chest when Tony made it out of the engine turbine and took out the soldier trying to shoot him.

Steve tried to hold onto that feeling, and he used it to carry him through the fight once they got back to Manhattan. He thought he was doing a good job until Tony told him about the nuke. The world slowed around him with Tony’s words. The noise faded until all he could hear was Stark over the comms. The certainty from the Valkyrie returned and settled over him. The memory was so clear. It had only been a few weeks ago, his mind screamed at him. He knew what Tony had to do, just as he had known for himself over the Arctic.

_Is this what Peggy felt?_ Steve wondered, as he watched the Iron Man suit scream into view. Tony took a sharp bank turn, assisted by the Tower, and headed upward into the portal. Steve felt his mouth open as he craned his neck upward to watch Tony become smaller and smaller, only a red speck before he disappeared into the portal.

He’d expected it to hurt more, honestly. Silence enveloped him, and everything was completely motionless once the Chitauri collapsed. All Steve felt was his breath, his chest heaving to pull air in and out through his mouth. The only sound in his ears was each sharp huff as he exhaled, his mouth dry.

_Panic attack,_ his mind supplied numbly, the remembered pain of trying to force air in and out of his lungs after Tony had told him his ma was dead washing over him.

The moment dragged on until he knew they had to close the portal. — and with that knowledge he also knew he would never forgive himself for it. His mouth worked, but it was too dry to produce the words. He swallowed, trying to wet his lips, before he could force anything out.

“Close it.”

With that simple command, Steve looked away. He could make himself do a lot of things. But watch the portal as it closed, losing Tony to space forever?  
Steve knew he couldn’t make himself do that.

It was only Natasha’s surprised grunt over the comm that made him look back up.

Everything crashed back into place again as the suit fell, the sound and the movement and the chaos, and Steve staggered, feeling his knees weaken with the force of it. He watched the Hulk catch Tony in midair, elation bubbling over as he watched the two crash-land onto the street. His knees gave out, and when he realized Tony wasn’t breathing, panic rose within him, the moments stretching impossibly long. Steve felt like he was watching Bucky fall all over again, the image overlying the view of the Manhattan street, the Iron Man armor lying motionless in the middle of it. Then Tony gasped back awake, and relief burned through him, washing away the panic, followed closely by exhaustion and disbelief.

They had won.

(★)

When it was all over, when they had tried shawarma at Tony’s insistence and almost fallen asleep at the table, when Fury had dismissed them, Steve went back to the apartment.

He knew as soon as he walked in that he couldn’t stay there. The emotions of the last 24 hours crashed down on him, and he sat in one of the chairs in the living room with his head in his hands. Steve kept seeing Tony’s blank looks, his eye-rolls, and the contempt whenever Steve tried to prove he could keep up.

Where had the man Steve had met in Brooklyn come from?

The interactions were painful, and Steve knew he just couldn’t keep doing it. Tony had extended an invitation for all of them to move into the tower once it was livable again. Steve had been included in that invitation, but the idea of living so close to Tony — _this_ version of Tony — was just too much. Steve didn’t need to be reminded every day of how much he’d lost, and he certainly didn’t need the daily reminders of exactly how far the world had moved on without him.

It was better for everyone, Steve told himself firmly. Especially for Steve, with his one-sided feelings for Tony. Whoever it was he’d met in that alley in 1939, this Tony was clearly not the same man.

So after they met at the Bethesda Fountain and sent Loki and Thor back to Asgard, after Tony and Steve shook hands and Steve felt like Tony’s touch burned his skin, Steve packed up his motorcycle and left. It was the freest he’d felt in a long time. He simply left behind the apartment and everything in it; it all had been purchased by Shield anyway. Steve was surprised at how liberating it was — he’d never walked away from anything before.

First, he went back to Brooklyn, to the Evergreens Cemetery. He climbed the hill and knelt in the grass in front of his parents’ headstones. The enamel Easter Rising pin was long gone, of course, but Steve was surprised to find that people had left tokens: small toy shields; stuffed versions of himself and the other Avengers; flowers in all shades of red, white, and blue; American flags in all shapes and sizes; small stubs of candles with melted tops and wicks had burned down to ash; drawings of himself and the others fighting the Chitauri. Someone had even left calla lilies, the stark white petals contrasting where they rested against the granite. Steve felt his eyes fill with tears as he bowed his head, overcome by the small gestures of gratitude. Those people — they couldn’t have known when they left those tokens here that he was the original Steve Rogers, the first Captain America, the man whose parents were actually buried there. They had no way of knowing that he would come to visit his parents’ graves and see what they’d left in thanks.

He pulled his dog tags out from under his shirt and rubbed the pad of his thumb over the St. Monica medal hanging next to them. Her features were almost entirely worn away from the innumerable times he’d made that very same gesture. His head still bowed, Steve thought of his ma and recited the Prayer to St. Monica, as he had heard her do so many times. Finished, he traced the engraving of her name on the headstone: Sarah Bridget Donahue Rogers. 

Tony’s words from the day they’d buried her came to mind, when Steve had asked him how long it would hurt: _It’s more that I can feel the contours of the hole she left in my life_ , he’d said, speaking of his own mother. Tony had been right; the pain had faded into a dull ache, the contours of the hole she’d left behind. He still missed her every day — missed her advice and her no-nonsense approach to problems. He missed the smell of her hair and her smile. But the sharpness had faded, and he didn’t miss her sadness or her suffering while she had been sick, her white hot fury whenever something happened in Ireland. He hoped that, somehow, she knew her beloved home had finally won its independence.

He could feel the edges of the space her death had left behind, the space she no longer occupied in his life. He’d worried at those edges, had worn them smooth the same way he’d worn down the sharp lines on the St. Monica medal by running his fingers over the engraving. The loss of Bucky — and even the loss of Tony, those edges splintered again by seeing this version of him, so different than his Tony — those edges were still sharp, and they cut at him when his mind sought out those contours. His mind had returned to the memories of them together — both time spent with Bucky and Tony individually as well as all three together — so many times, going over them the way his fingers sought out the carving on the silver St. Monica medal, soothing his mind and helping him work through his grief.

From Brooklyn, he rode down the eastern seaboard to Washington D.C. The night he got into town, he went to the World War II Memorial and watched the lighted water stream into the fountain of the Atlantic Pavilion. He traced the letters on the New York column before seeking each of the others for the American Howling Commandos: California for Morita, Georgia for Jones, and Massachusetts for Dugan. He came back to New York for Bucky. He saw the lonesome statues of the Korean War Memorial and ran his fingers over the names etched into the black wall of the Vietnam Memorial, finding tears in his eyes as the country he loved seemed to fail time and again to learn from its mistakes. He stood at the edge of the reflecting pool, with the Lincoln Memorial behind him and the Washington Monument visible above the World War II Memorial. He avoided Arlington Cemetery, where his own gravestone and statue were, even though it also meant skipping the ones for Bucky.

And when the weight of everything that had happened was too much, when the press of history — both that he’d lived and that he’d missed — was too heavy, he left and rode west.

Steve marveled at the Gateway to the West, the beautiful silver arch that towered over St. Louis. He found the easy rolling fields of Kansas soothing, the sparsity of the landscape and other people a relief he hadn’t even known he was looking for. The winds roared across the plains, and it seemed to blow the cobwebs out of his mind as he drove his motorcycle past the amber waves of grain towards the purple mountains’ majesty.

He reached Denver, where the mountains rose up from the plains, dominating the western edge of the city. Steve followed I-70, winding his way through small mountain towns, snow still on the peaks even in May. He took Loveland Pass and stood on what felt like the top of the world at the continental divide. He detoured off I-70 towards Leadville, taking the highway north to what remained of Camp Hale. Steve spent a long time contemplating the signs that warned hikers about the historic military weapons area and looking at the concrete structures jutting up from the valley floor. He said a silent prayer for the brave men he’d met of the 10th Mountain Division, whom the Howling Commandos had assisted in Italy near Nago-Tarbole in 1944. He could feel Bucky’s presence at his shoulder, also paying his respects.

Bucky followed him to Dotsero, where the Colorado River crossed the interstate. He spent the afternoon there by the water, sketching out the scene with its rocky riverbanks, gray granite interrupted by the green trees. He added Bucky to the middle of the shallow river, his pants rolled up to knees, arms crossed and expression proud, satisfaction in his eyes.

Steve looked at his drawing, adding some final touches, and remembered the discussions with Bucky, the threats to leave Brooklyn and never come back during the worst of the Depression. To go west and find a better life like the pioneers they’d learned about in school. Bucky had romanticized the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, telling Steve that it would be the most impressive thing they would ever see in their lives and how much better their lives could be away from the city. Steve had been uninterested, but for a while Bucky had been obsessed. He’d poured over maps, following the Colorado River from its headwaters at La Poudre Pass Lake to where it crossed into Utah before turning south into Arizona. He’d plotted out what trains could take them to the new national park there, dedicated in 1919 at the end of the Great War. He’d calculated out how much each ticket would cost and how long it would take for them to save enough for the trip from Colorado to Mexico, following the path of the river and spending the most time at the Grand Canyon. He’d taken books out of the Brooklyn Library about it and told Steve about how the forces of the river had shaped the canyon over time.

Later, Bucky and Tony had talked about the construction of the Hoover Dam and its significance. Tony had given impassioned lectures, complete with schematics, about how the dam generated hydroelectricity using the 17 turbines churning within the concrete and steel, providing electricity to Nevada, Arizona, and California, and how, in 1939, it was the largest hydroelectric installation in the world. Bucky had been enthralled, and they had made a pact to see it together one day, as neither one had ever been to either the Grand Canyon or the Hoover Dam. Steve had even done a series of drawings for Bucky based on pictures depicting the canyon and the river, the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. 

In Grand Junction, Steve bought a map and figured out that the Grand Canyon was seven hours to the southwest. He marveled how the map had changed since Bucky had last poured over it, at Lake Powell, which had been created by damming the river in Southern Utah in the 1950s. He thought about how impressed Bucky would have been that the river was still being used to change the landscape and people’s lives. How Tony could have talked to him about the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, how its physics were similar to that of the Hoover Dam, how the amount of hydroelectric power it produced compared to the Hoover Dam, and how it provided equitable water to both the upper basin for Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah and the lower for Nevada, Arizona, and California. When the map lines blurred and a tear smudged the P on the lake’s label, Steve knew he wasn’t ready to go to the Grand Canyon yet.

From there, the mountains gave way to barren desert, and Steve turned first south to see some of the natural wonders of Utah: Arches and Canyonlands then west to Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion. He found the silence of the desert soothing, and he took the time to draw some of the breathtaking views. Steve felt Tony there; the reds and yellows echoed the Iron Man armor, and Steve kept seeing things out of the corner of his eye down in the canyons. Whatever they were, they were always gone by the time he’d turned his head.

So he continued west, through Tioga Pass and Tuolumne Meadows down to Yosemite Valley. He climbed to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls, looking out over the valley with Half Dome to his left and El Capitan out of sight to his right. The water roared furiously over the edge from the last of the spring melt, and Steve sat on a granite ledge, leaning against the metal bars to prevent people from falling. He wondered what the free fall would feel like from the edge of the granite cliff down to the Valley floor, all 2425 feet of it. The spray from the falls left him cold and damp, and he felt utterly alone, wishing that Bucky were there. When he closed his eyes, all he saw was the deep blue of the North Atlantic fading into black nothingness, feeling weightless as he’d pointed the nose of the Valkyrie down towards the ice, followed by the cold water seeping into his uniform.

From Yosemite, he turned north to see the giant redwoods standing sentinel on the California coast, and he enjoyed feeling small next to the largest living organisms on the planet. 

He rode south to San Francisco. Steve stood on the Golden Gate Bridge, trying to parse the dichotomy between the view of both the Marin Headlands and San Francisco that left him breathless and the signs exhorting that there is hope. Steve shook his head, his hair blowing over his face from the salty wind coming in off the Pacific. He remembered reading about Harold Wobber in 1937, the World War I veteran who had jumped from the bridge three months after it had opened. At the time, he’d wondered how someone could despair so completely that jumping 245 feet from the bridge into the Bay seemed like a reasonable choice.

He didn’t wonder anymore.

Steve went to the Sutro Baths at Lands End and put his feet in the Pacific beneath the Cliff House for his ma, who had always wanted to dip her feet in both oceans, although he regretted the decision as soon as he felt the cold water between his toes.

He drove south on CA-1, hugging the coastline and stopping frequently to watch the waves on the shoreline, the crashing a soothing susurrus when the wind in his ears had faded away. Every night, he watched the sun set into the Pacific, blazing a path across the water that seemed to lead straight back to Steve. He sketched out the beaches and trees, the forest and cliffs, wishing he had someone to show them to. When he closed his eyes, he could feel Bucky’s shoulder and hip pressed into his, the wonder in his eyes as he flipped through the drawings he’d made of the thing in Tony’s chest.

_The arc reactor,_ he corrected himself.

Steve rode past Tony’s house in Malibu on Point Dume, stopping to marvel at its huge windows looking out over the Pacific and the beautiful architectural lines from below on Big Dume Beach, this time taking care to stay well away from the water. He wondered at the life Tony had built for himself here, the place that by all accounts Tony considered home more than Manhattan. Steve couldn’t help but contrast it with the time they had spent together in Brooklyn, a time that never failed to suffuse him with warmth and contentment, even with all the hardships of the Depression. Was Tony happy here? Was this house also full with friends and family, laughter and happiness? Were the memories here ones he looked back on with fondness — did he come back to them, returning to them when he was tired, or lost, or lonely? Had he worn those contours smooth, finding comfort in them?

Steve hoped so — he hoped so fiercely, as though the passion with which he felt that desire could burn its way to Tony and keep him warm. He thought of how closed off this Tony was, the way his expression never seemed to completely relax, or how his smiles never really reached his eyes. When he pictured this Tony, Steve saw him dressed impeccably, not a wrinkle in his pants or suit jacket, his arms crossed tightly over his chest and his posture stiff and intractable. Hopefully this was a place that Tony could relax, show the easy smile that Steve loved, the one that caused the lines around his eyes to crinkle, letting Steve know that it was real.

He rode past the Santa Monica pier, where he now knew Tony had taken his first test flight, and through all of the Beaches: Long, Huntington, Newport, and Laguna. He even went to a Dodgers game at Dodgers Stadium, only to see them lose to the Mets in what Steve saw as the height of bitter irony.

After the game ended and the sun had set, Steve rode his motorcycle back to Huntington Beach and sat in the sand south of the pier. The waves crashed against the shore, the moon leaving a long jagged band of silver across the water, and Steve could feel the humidity in the air from the ocean, feel the wind coming in cold off the water even though it was the end of June. Despite the moving air, he was still overheated, his skin damp and clammy from sweat, and his shirt clung to him after sitting in the sun during the game. His dog tags and the St. Monica medal were hot and sticky against his skin, under his shirt. He closed his eyes, letting his head sag between his shoulders, leaning so far over that his forehead was almost pressed against his knees. He let the sound and smell of the ocean wash over him, and a sob slipped out.

He felt like his trip had been a failure — that _he_ was a failure. His goal had been to set aside his memories and start over. Figure out some way to live without Bucky and Tony, without anything familiar. He knew he didn’t have any choice — this is what his life was now, in this world that had left him behind. But instead, he felt like he had only picked up more broken pieces along the way. He was still trying to put them back together into a shape he at least recognized, but everything he knew, every way he knew how to put them back together — it was impossible, trying to form a picture that didn't exist any more. Instead of leaving it behind — all of it, his fears, his memories, his life, his war, his friends, his ma — instead, it had followed him. He continued to carry his broken pieces, and he didn’t know how to give them up. Just like his ma’s medal, he had worried at the edges so much that he’d worn them down. But they no longer fit together, and he was just left with the weight of them, dragging him under.

So he decided that he would carry them one last place, to the end of the line: the Grand Canyon.

Steve arrived two days before his birthday, and he spent July 3rd buying a pack and camping equipment to hike to the bottom. The next day, on what was either his 27th or 94th birthday, depending on how you counted it, he set off from the North Kaibab trailhead to follow the path down into the canyon. The hike was grueling, even for him, the path carved out from the wall of the canyon with only inches separating the canyon wall on one side from the fatal drop on the other. The path was made up of red and gray stone, and the arid air meant he kicked up dust in plumes as he hiked, coating his boots, socks, and legs. When he stopped for a drink or to get food out of his pack, he found the dust on his bag and t-shirt, the only clean spaces where the straps came over his shoulders. Steve felt like it formed a cloud around him, surrounding him and suffocating him, as he made his way deeper into the canyon. It blanketed everything, clinging to him; it was his burdens made tangible, soaking into every pore until he knew he could never scrub it all off. Even the sky reminded him of everything he was trying to leave behind; he looked up at the clear blue framed on both sides by the red rock, white clouds making fluffy dots between the rims, and alternately it made him think of the Valkyrie and the arc reactor.

He wasn’t sure which was worse.

The trail descended 5740 feet through Roaring Creek Canyon, and he took comfort in the greenery that was sometimes present along the trail. He hiked over wooden bridges and wondered at the water that rushed down towards the Colorado River. He moved more slowly than he needed to with the serum, taking his time to enjoy the scenery, to reflect on the journey.

Steve could feel his ghosts gather around him: his ma, Bucky, and Tony, as they travelled with him deeper into the canyon. They remained close throughout the 14 mile trip, and Steve could feel them crowding around as he pitched his tent at the Bright Angel Campground, with the Colorado River roaring just beyond.

That night, Steve tried to get comfortable on the bedding he’d brought with him inside the tent, but it was impossible. He felt tired but not sleepy, and the nylon walls of the tent made him feel claustrophobic. Steve walked from his campsite to sit by the river, looking up at the suspension bridge that connected the one side of the canyon to the other. He felt the same way, caught between the past and the present, unable to move fully toward one or the other.

Without any lights, he could see the stars so far above in the small strip of sky visible between the north and south rims. Even outside, with the sound of the water running by and the open space around him, he felt like the walls of the Grand Canyon were closing in on him, that the suspension bridge was getting shorter, pulled tight between them. He closed his eyes, trying to dismiss the oppressive feeling, and forced himself to remember.

Steve could remember how Bucky smelled, a combination of his cologne and hair pomade, with the hint of tobacco from his Luckies, and hot metal underneath, first from his metal work at the Naval Yard and later from his gun as a unit’s sniper. Tony had also smelled of hot metal, with hints of coconut as well. His ma had always smelled of Ivory soap and the starch and bleach she’d used on her nursing uniform to keep it crisp and white.

Thinking of the people he loved, of the way they smelled and how those scents could bring them back to him, he pulled out one of his sketchbooks. With quick lines, he brought them back to life for a moment: his ma on the chair next to his bed, watching over him while he was sick, wisps of hair escaping from her bun. Bucky, his head cocked to the side with a smirk, his arms thrown open, flush and insisting that they go to Coney Island for the day. Tony, his clever hands busy as he fixed a typewriter he’d brought home from one of his clients.

The realization hit him so forcibly it took his breath away: for the first time in his life, he was truly lonely.

He'd carried his broken pieces with him because he had nothing else. Without his ma, without Tony, without Bucky — he had nothing left to hang on to. At least before, no matter how bleak, he’d had Bucky there for him.

Even when he had nothing, he’d had Bucky.

And now he had Tony, this Tony, who rubbed him so raw because it was the false hope over and over again of having _his_ Tony there. The one who understood and actually saw _him_ , saw beyond the scrawny worthless Steve Rogers, who instead saw him as something worthwhile. Valuable.

Treasured.

The Tony who had fixed his radio and taken him to the Dodgers game; who had reassured him that Steve wouldn’t always be like this, that someday he would be able to do the things he dreamed of; who had brought home his ma’s things and held him as his world fell apart; who had helped him get back up when he thought he never would again.

Steve had a choice — he could see that now. He could keep doing what he was doing, dragging around his broken pieces until they tore him apart. Or he could go back and figure out a way to use them to build something new, something for himself in this brave new world.

And maybe, if he were lucky, if he worked to wear down Tony’s sharp edges, this Tony might come to resemble his.

Steve looked at his three sketches, of the three people he loved most in the world. Under the light of the moon and the stars, he dug a small hole near the water’s edge. He folded the three sheets of paper together into a small, tight square and placed it in the hole, covering it with the red dirt. He built a small cairn out of rocks over it. He sat for a long time next to it, looking out over the dark water flowing past, on its way to the Gulf of California. He cried silently, the wet tracks on his face shining silver in the moonlight. He cried for the things he’d lost — for his friends and family, for the loneliness that had enveloped him since he’d woken up, for the desolation of being a soldier without a war, a man without a purpose.

He wiped his face with one hand then rested it on the top rock of the cairn, the moisture soaking into the smooth red surface.

The sun rose slowly, lighting up first the sky, tinging it with pink as the red rock reflected it, before the beams crested the North Rim. Steve sighed and sniffled, wiping his face again as he stood. He went back to his campsite and packed up his things.

It was time to go home.


	3. Love Still as Once You Loved

Steve arrived at the Tower on a warm summer afternoon four days after his birthday. He stood just outside the lobby along the large bank of glass windows and looked up at the top of the tower, where the lone A was the only thing left from the letters that had spelled out Stark on the side of the building. Even though it was almost two months later, the city was still in shambles, slowly being rebuilt. Stark Tower was no exception, although Steve had been assured by Pepper that the residential areas at the top had been remodeled, even if the exterior of the building was still under construction.

This was harder than he’d expected.

The people staffing the concierge were very helpful in pointing him to the bank of private elevators at the back of the lobby, and with Jarvis’s assistance, Steve found himself riding up to the floor Tony had set aside for him personally. The elevator opened out into a well-appointed hallway, and his front door led into the living area of an apartment — his apartment, he supposed. There were floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the east and north walls. Steve abandoned his bag on the floor, drawn to the view of the art deco top of the Chrysler Building just east of Stark Tower. When he looked north, he could see Rockefeller Center to the northwest and part of Central Park beyond.

The apartment itself had been furnished in a somewhat nondescript but comfortable style, but Steve thought he could see Tony’s fingerprints on some of it. The couches were a comfortable dark brown leather, and the floor was some kind of dark synthetic wood. There were thick, soft rugs on the floor and a fireplace set into one of the support beams in the glass wall with a balcony beyond. The open living space led into a kitchen, with dark stone as the countertop. There was a small sitting area, more intimate than the living room, set off from the kitchen. Opposite the kitchen was a hallway that led down to what Steve assumed were bedrooms and a bathroom.

He appreciated the design. Unlike the railroad apartment in Brooklyn that Shield had provided him, this apartment made no attempt to conceal that it was a modern apartment in a modern building in Manhattan in the 21st century. The railroad apartment had almost been insulting that way; he may have undergone one of the most dangerous and experimental medical treatments in human history, but Shield had decided he couldn’t live in an apartment that didn’t resemble one from the 1930s. It was as if Shield pretended enough, they could continue the fiction they’d started when he’d woken up in that fake convalescent room, listening to the Dodgers game he’d already heard. The Brooklyn apartment had been all wrong in the same way. Maybe it looked like a Depression era apartment — but only if you hadn’t _actually_ lived during the Depression.

This apartment didn’t have that sense of treading carefully around him, like Steve might have a breakdown if he ran into an unfamiliar piece of technology or saw a car outside his window. He felt himself relax — the apartment didn’t have any more expectations than for him to just live in it.

There were bookshelves lining one of the interior walls, and Steve ran his hand over the spines. The books were a mix of fiction and non-fiction, classics from all of the decades he missed, plus some about the American space program and other scientific advances he’d missed. When he looked over from the bookshelves to the corner, he found a record player in the corner next to the fireplace. Beneath it was a milk crate filled with records, mostly big band music from the 40s and 50s.

Steve felt his knees buckle at the sight, and he slumped to the floor. He could tell at first glance it wasn’t a real milk crate — it was clearly something designed by some company to look like an antique. But it reminded him strongly of the one he’d used to keep his art supplies in next to the drafting table that he had been so proud of.

For a moment he felt light-headed. Maybe Tony did remember. Maybe at some point during Steve’s road trip he’d gone back in time only to return before Steve had gotten back to New York.

But as soon as it crossed his mind, Steve realized it was just wishful thinking on his part. Surely if that had happened, Tony would have reached out to him — called him to see if Steve also remembered that experience, maybe ask him what the hell had happened. He knew that things had remained tense between them after the Battle of New York, but surely Tony traveling back in time would have been enough to bridge the gap between them.

He put his head in his hands, closed his eyes, and drew a deep sigh, trying not to remember too much. Instead, Steve thought of his trip across the country that had left him emptier than when he’d left, of his desolation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He could do this, he told himself firmly. He could build a new team. He could make friends with Tony again. He could build a place for himself in this time. 

Steve’s hand drifted to the dog tags, and he could feel the St. Monica medal through the soft fabric of his shirt. He would wear Tony down, smooth out his rough edges. Surely the Tony he’d met before and the one here now were the same person — Steve just didn’t know where they existed in relation to one another. They had been friends before and could do so again, given enough time. And even if he never became Steve’s Tony, the one from before, that didn’t mean they couldn’t still have a meaningful friendship now. Steve recognized it didn’t have to be the same.

Opening his eyes, Steve scooted closer to the records in the milk crate. He thumbed mechanically through the albums: Harry James, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Ben Pollack, Jack Teagarden. Others he didn’t recognize: Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Etta James. He pulled one of the Ella Fitzgerald ones out at random and put it on the record player. The pop and hiss of the needle came through the speakers, and then the sound of an orchestra filled the room.

Steve stood up and crossed back over to the window. He looked back over the city as Ella’s voice swept over him, her deep rich tones soothing something within him, helping it to loosen. As he listened to the music, he thought of those hot summer days in the tenement apartment with the radio on, after Tony had fixed it. It wasn’t the same as the music he’d listened to on those long, glorious days, but it wasn’t all that different.

_Maybe this Tony isn’t the same Tony,_ he thought as he looked back at the record player, his gaze falling on the selection of records Tony had picked out for him, _but maybe he’s also not_ that _different either._

(★)

Steve struggled with the largesse of living in the Tower. Jarvis — and what a marvel Jarvis was in and of himself — assured Steve that he would be happy to order whatever Steve needed to be delivered to his suite. It was difficult for Steve, however; he wasn’t used to charity, and while he realized that the cost was insignificant to Tony, it mattered to Steve. But when he tried to shop himself, the experience was too overwhelming. Department stores had hundreds of people, and that made Steve uneasy, especially once he realized he hadn’t seen crowds like that since well before the war and possibly not even since he was eleven years old, before the stock market crashed.

To help with the anxiety, he fell back into old habits. He avoided ordering more things than he really needed. He found frugality comforting, a connection back to the world he’d grown up in, the memories he had from before. It also helped because he found just having so much _stuff_ around him increased his anxiety, making him feel uncomfortable even in his own space.

When Tony came upon him darning socks in the common living room, Steve was embarrassed. He hadn’t expected Tony to be up from the workshop, and he certainly hadn’t expected him to ask about what he was doing. But here, in the middle of the tower surrounded by everything he could possibly ask for, Steve could see how it looked to Tony. An activity his ma had taught him, that had kept him and Bucky in warm socks through bitter Brooklyn winters when he couldn’t work or really even go outside, something he himself had taught Tony — well, it was old fashioned, wasn’t it? Out of date.

Unnecessary.

But when Tony grabbed his pile of socks and the one out of his hands, complete with the darning egg still inside, it was hard to see it as anything but a personal indictment. Steve felt his mouth work, still staring at the trash can where Tony had dumped all of it, but no sounds came out.

He reeled for a moment, even though he knew he was standing completely still out of sheer force of will. What the hell had happened? Where was the Tony who had asked him what he was doing, asked Steve to teach him how to darn socks? He closed his eyes briefly, a flash of pain suffusing through him, as he had a profound realization.

Maybe this was how it started. Maybe the reason Tony had asked him about darning socks was because of this. Maybe, when he saw Steve sitting on the couch in the tenement apartment, what Tony saw instead was this moment. Steve remembered Tony’s palpable embarrassment when he’d confessed he’d never needed to know how to do darn socks and Steve’s own incredulity in turn, imaging a life so comfortable that Tony could just buy new socks. But isn’t that what this world was now? They had each started at different points in time, with Steve in the past moving forward and Tony in the future moving backwards. Tony had had these memories then, while Steve had those memories now.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Steve heard himself saying, and even he wasn’t sure if he meant throwing the socks away now or learning to darn socks then.

The day after, Natasha found him in the gym, pounding a heavy bag as hard as he could. She came around the side of it so he could see her coming towards him. She rolled out her shoulders, flexing her neck side to side. He stopped as she approached, breathing heavy and conscious of the sweat running from his scalp down his back, his tank top sticking to his skin.

“What’d the bag do to you?” Natasha asked, grabbing it as it swung on its bracket, bringing it to a standstill.

“Just trying to get a workout in,” Steve answered noncommittally.

Natasha lifted one eyebrow eloquently, looking first at the bag then back at Steve. “Is that what this is?” she asked, laughter in her voice taking the off sharp edge. She let go of the bag and stretched her arms out, popping her knuckles at the terminus of her stretch. “Want to give something a try that can hit back?”

Steve hesitated. He knew she was very good — he’d seen it first hand during the Battle of New York — but he also didn’t want to hurt her. She grinned, as though reading his mind. “Give it a chance before you decide it’s not going to work,” she said. She walked over to the sparring mats and spread her arms wide before going up on her toes and tucking one leg behind the other in a curtsy, the entire move graceful. She repeated the curtsy to the other side, coming back up to standing. “It’s just me — I’ll even promise to pull my punches.”

She startled a laugh out of Steve with that. She reminded him so strongly of Bucky in that moment, with his cocksure attitude, that extra bit of showmanship. “If I have to do it on my toes, you’ll need to,” Steve teased back. He approached her on the mat, staying out of her reach as they circled one another. She cocked her head to the side, grinning at him again. Suddenly, she rushed him, getting into his space. Steve threw a punch, which she easily dodged. She hooked an arm around his outstretched one and rolled herself up onto his back. Her weight threw him off balance, and he staggered for a moment as she wrapped an arm around his neck. He reached around and pulled her off over his shoulder. She used the momentum to tumble forward out of his grasp and slide between his legs, which she swept out from under him from behind. He fell heavily onto his chest and rolled over to look up at her. She smirked and offered him a hand. “Want to try that again? You don’t mind your legs very well.”

Steve stared at her hand for a moment before getting up on his own. “You’re on,” he challenged.

A couple hours later they were both sprawled out on the mat, staring up at the ceiling. Natasha was breathing hard, one arm thrown over her face, and Steve could feel sweat pooling underneath him on the mat. “Feel better?” Natasha asked him, reaching over to the edge of the mat to throw a water bottle at him.

The bottle hit him right in the middle of the belly, and Steve curled onto his side, laughing uproariously at her accuracy. “You know,” he said as he gasped between breaths, “I actually do.”

Natasha smiled at him, a softer expression that she’d had earlier. “Good. Now what did Tony do yesterday?”

Steve was taking a drink, and he sputtered at her question, spilling water all over himself and the mat. He coughed, trying to get the water out of his lungs, before he was able to ask, “Why do you think Tony has anything to do with this?”

Natasha sat up smoothly, pulling one leg in and stretching the second one out in front of her. “You two weren’t exactly being quiet yesterday,” she said. “Arguing over socks, was it?”

“We weren’t arguing,” Steve shot back, but even he had to admit his tone was a little defensive. Natasha raised both her eyebrows, and Steve had to resist the urge to duck his head. “Well, okay. But it wasn’t really an _argument_ ,” he conceded. “More of a — disagreement.”

“Right,” was her only answer.

The silence stretched on for a moment, and Steve could feel his discomfort amplify. “I was — darning some socks,” Steve finally explained, “and he just — threw them away.” The explanation made him feel ridiculous now that he said it out loud. Natasha didn’t immediately respond, and Steve found her looking at him narrowly, her expression thoughtful.

“That makes sense,” she acknowledged.

“It — does?” Steve hesitated before reaching over to grab a towel beside the mat. He reached up to dry off his hair and neck.

Natasha stood up fluidly, bending her torso to each side before stretching her arms over her head. “Tony — he doesn’t understand what it is to need material things,” she offered. “I think that you and I had much more austere upbringings. And when he sees something that he thinks can be easily fixed with money, he simply — makes the problem go away.”

“He makes the problem go away,” Steve echoed skeptically. He stood up and drank the rest of the water from his bottle. He walked towards the wall and threw the bottle away. “I see.”

“No, you don’t.” She moved to get in front of him, preventing him from leaving the gym. “I don’t think you see at all.”

Steve wet his lips and looked away from her. “Seems pretty simple from here. He throws money at the problem to make it go away.”

“The problem he’s trying to make go away,” Natasha enunciated, “isn’t _you_.”

Steve froze at that. “What do you mean?” he finally managed to answer. His voice was low, and even he could hear the warning in it.

“He knows that you’re struggling to settle in and that Shield treated you like you’d break if they threw you into the future too fast.” She shrugged, wiping off her face with a towel. “He’s trying to make sure you have everything that you need to be happy here.”

Steve balled up the sweaty towel he was still holding and threw it into the dirty laundry hamper. “Tony can’t buy the things that’ll make me happy here,” he said with a grimace.

“He knows that — but if he can’t fix _those_ things, he can at least try to fix what he can.” Natasha threw her towel after his, and they started across the gym towards the exit. “Look — it’s what he does. It’s what he learned to do. He thinks he needs to be useful, and it’s safer for him to do that than talking to you about feelings — either yours or his. He tries to anticipate what your problems are and fix them before they ever show up. It’s why he gave Rhodey an Iron Man suit and Pepper SI when he thought he was going to die from palladium poisoning.”

Steve grabbed her arm, stopping them both short, and spun her around to face him. “Wait,” he said. “What did you say? He’s dying from palladium poisoning?”

Natasha gave him a funny look. “No,” she answered slowly. “He was — but then he re-discovered vibranium to use in his arc reactor core.” She hesitated before adding, “It was in your briefing. Didn’t you read his file?”

Steve put a hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. “No, I didn’t read his file. As someone whom everyone makes assumptions about because they think they _know_ Captain America, I decided I’d rather get to know Tony myself instead of read what Shield thinks of him.”

Silence followed, and Steve looked up to find Natasha gaping at him, shock clear on her face. “If you two ever get your act together and stop arguing about socks long enough to have a real, honest conversation, the rest of us are in big trouble,” she said after a long pause.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Steve snapped back, suddenly exhausted.

“It means you have a lot more in common than you probably think.” Natasha threaded her arm through the crook of his elbow, propelling him back towards the door. “How are you sleeping? And eating?”

Steve let her lead him, shooting her a wry glance. “Just fine,” he said.

“I bet,” Natasha grinned back at him, not fooled at all. “Go take a shower and come to the common living room. Let someone take care of you for a change.”

“Trust me, I had enough of that growing up.” 

Natasha released him, and he took a few steps towards the stairs before she said, “Yeah? How about this: I _did_ read your file. You lived with your mother, then moved in with Bucky, then went to Camp LeHigh. You travelled with the bond show before you liberated the 107th at Azzano. Then you formed the Howling Commandos. How many meals did you eat alone in that time?” she asked, her tone challenging.

Steve hesitated at the question, standing completely still in the hallway. It was so close to the questions he had turned over his mind during his trip across the country, the ones with sharp edges that he’d tried smooth down, carrying them until they’d overwhelmed him at the Grand Canyon. So close — but he could still feel the tacit dismissal when Tony threw the socks away, the sense that he was just another _thing_ that needed to be _fixed_ so Tony could move on to the next problem. He could live with lonely — couldn’t he? — but he wasn’t sure he could live with being something broken, something that Tony needed to fix.

“C’mon, Steve,” Natasha pleaded, her tone gentler. “I get it — I really do. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I’ll see how I feel after the shower,” Steve answered before disappearing into the stairwell.

(★)

Dinner with Clint and Natasha became a regular thing. Steve and Natasha slowly built a fragile friendship together, and he found himself looking forward to their time together. She seemed to understand the things he couldn’t find the words to say and always knew how to draw him out when he was lost within himself. He didn’t know much about her childhood — he hadn’t read anyone’s files — but he could sense that she understood austerity, that she too hid her loneliness under her Black Widow persona. But she would show him glimpses of the real person underneath: someone who read voraciously and did cross-stitch, someone who preferred to listen to classical music — he only realized later they were all ballets — when she was alone, and liked to watch historical dramas. Natasha offered him these bits and pieces, and he did the same in return. He brought up Peggy without even meaning to, only to discover that she had recruited Natasha out of the Red Room.

One of the first times he could remember laughing — really laughing — in the future was at a story Natasha had told about Peggy outing and completely humiliating a particularly incompetent KGB agent at a fundraiser.

Clint was harder to draw out. He would appear at mealtimes but always seemed to stay on the periphery. Steve watched him assess the room, noting the exits and the places where he could take cover. He would often sit on the back of the couch, looking out over the city beyond the windows, his bow cradled in his lap. When given the chance, Clint kept Natasha between them, but Steve couldn’t tell who he was protecting.

He only understood when Natasha explained to him that Clint’s reception back at Shield had been chilly at best. Loki had killed over sixty agents at the facility where they were keeping the Tesseract when he destroyed it, and many agents felt that Clint was complicit. He had returned to cold stares and turned backs, as well as refusals to work with him. Someone had scrawled the words “traitor” and “murderer” on the door to his barracks. The general feeling was that Clint was personally responsible for Phil Coulson’s death. 

Tony’s offer to live at the Tower had been a relief for both of them. Clint had only felt more isolated and ostracized the longer he’d stayed at the Shield facility. Natasha had taken to shadowing him everywhere, her presence a deterrent for the worst behavior. And although she didn’t explicitly say it, Steve saw this behavior in Tony as another example of what she’d been trying to tell him: Tony anticipated the problem and came up with a solution to it, even before the two Shield agents had been aware there would be a problem.

Clint slowly relaxed around Steve, becoming friendly. He even went so far as to offer a handshake and a word of thanks for Steve’s easy acceptance on the Helicarrier after Natasha had cognitively recalibrated him. Their camaraderie was cemented after that during a poker game — Natasha’s suggestion — that was so cutthroat due to all three cheating that they finally had to settle it in the gym — where Natasha won.

Bruce was harder for Steve to get a read on. He was quiet and spent most of his time in his lab running experiments beyond Steve’s comprehension. But he would appear at mealtimes to cook, and he introduced Steve to a wide variety of curries that he had learned to prepare while in India. Steve enjoyed cooking dinner with him, expanding his repertoire from things that were easy to cook and made of things that lasted a long time to dishes made with fresh and exotic ingredients. Steve still struggled with so many options, and it threw him off when he opened his cabinets to find such abundance. It was nice to eat with the others and not have that responsibility to decide what he would eat that evening.

The four of them eventually established a comfortable evening routine that they stuck to most nights. Natasha, Clint, and Steve would spar in the afternoons and, after cleaning up and changing into comfortable clothes, they would go to the common area and start prepping for dinner. They took turns deciding the menu, and uncommon or sentimental dishes from their childhoods were encouraged. Bruce would appear a little later unless it was his night, helping with the final meal prep and by setting the table. They would eat together and usually do something afterwards, like play a game or watch a movie, before going to their individual apartments to wind down before bed.

Steve found the routine very comforting. It was domestic in a way he’d never experienced; even when he and Bucky had lived together, their meal preparation wasn’t very complicated, and it was usually limited by the availability of ingredients. In the war, there wasn’t any meal prep to speak of, just dividing up the work to establish camp and set a perimeter guard before collapsing into bed — if there was any sleep to be had at all. The routine, the consistency of the whole thing helped settle Steve in a way he hadn’t known he needed.

Steve understood that he had issues around food. It didn’t take a Shield therapist to figure that one out. He’d spent the first 25 years of his life wondering to some degree or another where his next meal was coming from. When there had been food, he’d wondered how much he really needed, navigating the complex dynamics between first his ma and then Bucky trying to make sure Steve had enough before they would take anything and Steve trying to not to take more than his fair share. There were days when he was so sick, his breathing so difficult, that he couldn’t eat at all, gasping for breath between sips of water. Food was emotional and complicated and painful in ways that he hadn’t expected, and the sudden bounty of the Tower, the idea that all he had to do was ask Jarvis to order it and it would arrive at his apartment — often within mere hours — it was too much for Steve to take in.

Too many choices, wrapped up in too many difficult emotions.

The first time he’d eaten as much as he wanted, he’d thrown it all up. Even with the serum, the austerity of war and the memory of the Depression had overwhelmed him, and the waste of the food had made him feel profoundly guilty. He was more careful after that, making sure to stop well before he was full, eating many small meals instead of three large ones. But it made him wary. He felt better eating around other people, enjoying the social aspect of it once Natasha, Clint, and Bruce made it part of their daily routines with him. It helped him to feel less lonely, like he was finding new pieces that he could put together, filling in all the empty spaces in his life. It was a way to make sense of the 21st century, to form some tentative bonds with the people he now lived with.

Which made it all the more painful when Tony wanted to talk about his eating habits in front of everyone.

Tony’s question initially didn’t quite register with Steve. He’d been laying out rolls to go into the oven, and he’d only been half listening to the conversation, lost in the comforting methodical nature of peeling the rolls apart and placing them on the baking sheet, pleased with symmetry. When he looked up, the question slammed into him: “You know you can order groceries whenever you want? And order anything you want?”

Steve felt his heart rate jump, the can of dough suddenly sweaty in his hand. He didn’t want to talk about this. His instincts told him exactly where this was going, and he could remember sitting on the couch that first night — the night he’d taught Tony to darn socks, god damn it — when Tony had brought home the pasta and squash and offered it to him. Steve had been so hungry — it was almost payday for Bucky, but Steve hadn’t managed to supplement their income at all, so there was nothing left. Tony had offered it to him, and Steve had known he should refuse. It was Tony’s, and times were hard. Who knew when Tony had eaten last?

But it had smelled so good, and Steve had been so hungry.

Steve felt his hands begin to shake at the memory, and he carefully set down the rolls next to the baking sheet, bracing his hands on the counter to keep the others from noticing. “You can just ask Jarvis. He’ll take care of it for you,” Tony continued on, unaware as the panic mounted, the tightness settling in Steve’s chest.

He could feel the activity in the kitchen slowly come to a halt. It was like the feeling he got when he used to pick fights before the serum, when he knew what he had to do and the other guy was still going to kick his ass for it. Time slowed in that moment, and he could see the trajectory of it, knowing what he was going to say, knowing what the other guy was going to do, which usually involved hitting him, knocking him down until either Bucky came or the other guy was satisfied he’d made his point. Things were moving slowly, but like every fight he’d ever gotten into, it was already beyond his control when he realized what was going on, what was going to happen. “I’m not sure what you mean,” Steve heard himself say. “Do you not want me here?”

_I invited you into my home,_ he wanted to plead instead. _I cleaned you up and tended your wounds. I made space for you in my life. I sat by your bed while you were out of your mind from fever. I couldn’t put my heart back together when you disappeared. Please don’t do this — please don’t show them my weak spots._

Natasha, bless her, came to his rescue. “That’s not what Tony means. Is it, Tony?”

Steve felt his mouth open, but he wasn’t fast enough. He was back in an alley in Brooklyn again, and the other guy was drawing back his arm for the punch. He knew it was going to hurt. He knew it in his bones the same way he knew where his hand needed to be to catch his shield when it came back to him. He just didn’t know where, exactly, Tony was going to hit him.

He just knew it was going to hurt.

“Of course not,” Tony said, beating Steve to it. “I just want you to know you can get whatever you want. If you like the fresh stuff we keep down here, get enough for your floor too. I’m sure you have to keep up with the serum and all that. Besides, you get cranky when you cut your chow.”

There it was.

Steve flinched and picked up a roll to give his hands something to do. He closed his eyes as the world stopped around him. He tried to absorb the pain, but it hurt — it really did. Steve knew that Tony didn’t know, couldn’t remember going without some nights when they just didn’t have enough. Sure, some days had been full of abundance, like the day they’d gone to Ebbets Field for his birthday. But other days they’d all gone to bed hungry, Tony included. He could remember getting sick sometimes, both when he lived with his ma and later with Bucky, because he just wasn’t getting enough. It was how it went sometimes. Steve still considered himself lucky it didn’t happen more often.

It was hard to shake the feeling it would happen again — it was just a matter of time.

Like the back alley fights, Steve couldn’t resist taking the bait. He knew it was a terrible idea, but at least he could pretend he was in control of the situation by making Tony say it again. At least Tony would also feel terrible. “When I do what?”

Steve watched Tony’s face as he answered, and he saw the hesitation there, the flash of realization as he caught up to the fact that this was going to end poorly. “When you cut your intake. You get hangry.”

“I don’t cut my intake,” Steve replied, almost reflexively. He couldn’t talk about this. Not here. Not now.

Not with Tony.

Steve suddenly realized that Bruce, Natasha, and Clint were still there. He turned around to look at them, feeling for all the world like Tony was going to sucker punch him while he wasn’t looking. “Do I?”

“I can’t say I’ve been paying attention,” Bruce answered, while Natasha and Clint nodded their agreement.

Tony surprised Steve by backpedaling. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

Steve turned back around to look at him, gratitude blooming in his chest. This was the first real glimmer he’d seen of the Tony he’d known, trying to protect Steve instead of cut him down. Steve released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, the tension in his chest easing a little bit.

But he was wrong. It wasn’t Tony who sucker punched him. It was Jarvis.

“Sir has found that your eating habits run on a 5.2 week cycle, mostly based on when you order groceries, during which you fluctuate your weight, calorie intake, exercise, fat and muscle mass, the types of food you eat, where you eat, and whom you eat with. This seems to affect the amount of time you spend with everyone else on the common floor, your physical performance, your mood, and your sleep,” the precise, British voice informed Steve — and everyone else in the room.

It was only because Steve was already looking at Tony that he caught the flicker of shame and regret that flashed over his face before Tony looked down and away, his expression going blank. Steve also looked away, putting the roll onto the baking sheet. He braced his hands again, feeling his shoulders tighten as he hung his head. He studied his hands, looking at where his knuckles were turning white because of how hard he was pushing them into the countertop, before asking, “Do you track this information on everyone?”

Steve continued looking down as Tony struggled to answer, not really listening. It was only when he heard Tony’s final question — “Do you want more socks?” — that Steve realized he wasn’t up to take any more hits that evening, intentional or not.

“No, I’m okay,” he tried to say kindly, but even Steve could tell that he fell short. “I don’t think I’m very hungry anymore though.”

Steve stepped away from the counter, and he tried not to look at Tony’s face as he moved past — he really did — but he saw the desperation, the pain and fear in Tony’s eyes.

The silence of the stairwell enveloped him, and Steve climbed up to his own apartment. By the time he was in his own living room, the quiet had become oppressive. He walked over to the record player and put on some jazz, letting the sound wash over and through him. Steve walked over the windows facing east and looked out at the Chrysler building illuminated before him, dominating the view outside his window.

Homesickness washed over him, and he longed for Brooklyn during the Depression, the tenement apartment, with its shared bath and small rooms, the radio and the boiler, his drafting table and his art supplies. Maybe it wasn’t as lavishly appointed, maybe it lacked an AI butler who would order him anything he wanted at any time of day or night, maybe he had alternately been too hot or too cold there depending on the season — but he’d been happy there, at least for a while.

Maybe he’d gone hungry some nights, but for over six months, Bucky and Tony had been there. They had filled up the apartment, filled the empty spaces in his life, and Steve had truly been happy. Not only that, but he was pretty sure Bucky and Tony had been too.

But here? Here he couldn’t even stand to have enough. It made him anxious and uncertain, unable to parse between the choices.

What kind of person couldn’t deal with having _enough_?

Jarvis warned him that Tony was on his way up, but Steve felt too exhausted, too overwhelmed, to even turn around when the elevator doors opened. He heard Tony cross the room and felt him come to stand behind him.

“Look, Steve, I —“

“Did you know, I can remember them building the Chrysler building?” Steve cut him off. He didn’t want to hear it. He knew Tony was sorry — Steve had seen it in his face before he’d left the room, and he didn’t really feel up to reconciling the difference between this Tony and his from before. This Tony was unhappy and stressed, quick to decide he needed to fix things that weren’t really problems. Steve could tell that this Tony was used to screwing up, to upsetting people.

And the reaction this Tony expected was dismissal. Rejection. Blame and recrimination.

Steve felt his heart break a little bit with the realization that he wasn’t the only one hurting here.

Steve continued to talk about the Chrysler building as he looked out the window. He tried to find a connection with Tony, some kind of common ground for them. He could sense Tony at his side, feel the warmth radiating off him. He tried to reconcile the two men he had known, the harder, flintier one here with him now versus the one he had gotten to know before. Something had to change — there had to be some kind of give. Steve just didn’t know what it was yet.

As he stood there, Steve realized it could be him. Maybe by showing Tony a piece of himself — something less than perfect, something vulnerable — maybe that’s what made things less difficult between them. Before, it had been easier. Steve was just Steve Rogers, 90 pounds soaking wet without any expectations to live up to. And Tony had already known him, at least a version of him.

When Tony apologized, that idea came back to Steve. Maybe instead of fighting Tony every step of the way, Steve could do something even riskier: he could trust Tony with a piece of himself that he didn’t show to everyone. He could let down his guard a little. So Steve tried to explain. He tried to voice the feeling that he was tired, that it was hard to live in a new century where everything was new and unfamiliar. “You’re not wrong. I do sometimes cut how much I eat. It’s a habit, I guess. Just — just let it go, okay? There’s a lot of stuff about this century I haven’t gotten used to — I don’t understand, and I guess I will eventually. I don’t have much of a choice, do I? But I don’t need it pointed out to me all the time.”

Tony glanced over at Steve when he was done. His expression was open and thoughtful, and it felt more familiar to Steve than a lot of the expressions he had seen on Tony’s face since he’d woken up. It was the look he’d seen on Tony’s face when he’d come back from Enzo’s to find Steve darning socks. The expression said that Tony was trying to figure out a puzzle, one that he was invested in. 

“If there’s anything I can do to help —“ Tony started to offer.

“There’s not,” Steve cut him off again. He looked out over the city, willing himself not to look over at Tony. He didn’t want to see the expression on Tony’s face that followed that offer, the brittle one that said he just wanted to fix the problem so it would go away. Steve remained there motionless, stonily gazing out the window, until Tony had gone.

Steve wasn’t a problem that just needed to be fixed. He just needed to settle in, to find his place in this time. He thought of his ma’s radio that Tony had fixed, and his expression when he’d first seen it. That questioning look, the one with the edge, that wondered why in the hell they were keeping something that was broken and useless.

Steve leaned his arm on the cool glass and propped his forehead against it, closing his eyes. He could see New York City in his mind, the one he remembered. The scaffolding around the Chrysler building and later the Empire State building. Steve had marveled at the construction of both, the immense effort that first brought the limestone from Indiana and then hoisted it a thousand feet in the air. He thought of the effort it took to build those skyscrapers, the determination that had taken the buildings from concept to plan to reality.

He could do this. He could build something in this world too. If they could drag tons of limestone and granite 750 miles, Steve could build something between him and Tony here. He thought about what Natasha had been trying to tell him, about how Tony tried to fix things because it was safe. It made him useful. Maybe Tony was also trying to reach out, in his own convoluted way.

Steve pushed away from the window and went to the bookshelf. He pulled out one of the sketchbooks Tony had bought for him and a pen. He walked back over to the window and sat down on the floor, leaning up against the glass. The light from the Chrysler Building reflected into his room, and he outlined a drawing in broad strokes. Tony emerged on the paper, sitting in the bathtub, peering out from under a towel with steam filling the room. Steve could smell the peppermint and eucalyptus in the steam filling the room, hear the wheezy rattle as Tony struggled to take deep breaths. He could feel the damp from the hot water clinging to his skin, the way it made his shirt stick. Steve remembered the feel of Tony’s skin under his hands, how the thin towel had hidden nothing when he’d helped Tony out of the tub. Tony had lost so much weight, made lean by the sparse food and living hand to mouth during the Depression. Then he’d lost even more with the pneumonia. 

Steve flipped the page and started drawing out Tony’s hands as they’d looked that day, clutching the edge of the bathtub — long thin fingers, the tendons and veins standing out on the back of his hands, the nails kept short and neat given his work fixing things. He remembered the way they’d clutched the towel before Steve had shown him out to drape it over his head and shoulders instead of letting it hang in his face.

At that thought, he sat upright, staring across the apartment without seeing.

Tony didn’t like wet things on his face.

Steve scrambled to his feet and rushed across the apartment, the sketchbook and pen forgotten on the floor. He thundered down the stairs to Natasha’s apartment and banged on the door until she opened it.

She had clearly been asleep, her red hair frizzy with slept-on curls. She had no makeup on, and she was wearing only a pair of shorts and a tank top with a sports bra underneath, one of the straps of the tank top slipping off her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” she asked through a yawn, rubbing her eyes with the back of one wrist. She moved away from the door, padding silently across the carpet to settle on a leather chair and wrap herself in a blanket.

“You said you read Tony’s file,” Steve said, following her. He dropped onto the matching couch, putting his head in his hands. His words were rushed, and he could feel an edge of panic, the need to know what had happened to Tony that made him so anxious under that wet towel. 

“Yeah, I did,” Natasha answered slowly, and Steve could see her shedding her tiredness as she sat forward, curious about Steve’s sudden interest.

“Why doesn’t he like having his face wet?” He looked up at her, earnest.

Natasha startled, a flash of surprise crossing her features before her expression shifted into a more neutral look. She ran a hand through her wild hair, fluffing it up. “Steve, you really ought to ask him,” she said after a long pause, settling back into the chair. She pulled her legs up, wrapping herself tighter into the blanket.

“I need to know,” he said, surprised at the hoarseness in his voice.

“Then you shouldn’t be afraid to ask him,” Natasha countered, not unkindly. “Weren’t you the one who said you wanted to hear it from him, not read it in a Shield file? Didn’t you say you were tired of people making assumptions about you just because you’re Captain America, and they think that means they know you?”

Steve surged to his feet and moved to her window, feeling restless and out of sorts. Her windows faced north and west, looking out over Rockefeller Center. He slammed his fist against the glass, holding back on the gesture at the last moment to keep from shattering it. “I need to know,” he repeated, the desperation clearer in his voice.

“What’s going on, Steve?” she asked. She got up from the chair, still wrapped in the blanket. “You didn’t like it when he laid one of your weak spots out for everyone to see. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she added when he glanced at her. “I know what it is to be hungry. I know what it is to not have enough, to wonder where your next meal is coming from, even when you’re surrounded by this.” Natasha spread her arms wide, taking in the apartment and Jarvis and even the city beyond them. “You don’t spend the first part of your life fighting to survive just to be able to put that aside because today you happen to have enough. You don’t _really_ believe that this will last forever. So your mind and your body make sure you remember how to just get by. Just in case. And you really didn’t like it when Tony laid all of that bare for everyone to see.”

Steve looked away from her, shame-faced. He opened his palm on the glass, feeling the cold smooth surface under his hand. 

“I’m not going to lay Tony’s weak spots bare just because you ask, Steve,” Natasha said. She touched his shoulder, her hand warm even through the soft fabric of his t-shirt. “You have to ask him yourself, _luchik_.” She came up on her tiptoes and gently kissed his cheek, nothing more than the warm, dry brush of her lips against his skin. “I’m going to bed, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.” Natasha then headed towards the bedroom, hitching the blanket up onto her shoulders more securely.

“I already know Tony and his weak spots,” Steve choked out, unable to face her. “I met him. In 1939. He lived with me and Buck for more than 6 months.”

His enhanced hearing picked up her pause on the plush carpet, the sound of her bare feet against it when she turned back to face him. “What did you say?” she said, and even though her voice was pitched low, Steve flinched, her voice filling up the apartment, surrounding him and ringing in his ears.

“I found Tony in an alley in Brooklyn. In 1939. I was twenty. He fixed my ma’s radio,” he added a little hysterically. Steve swallowed and flexed his fingers against the glass. Once the words started to come, he was unable to stop them. “He fixed the radio, and Bucky agreed to let him stay. He made a living fixing things for people.” Steve closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He could see it all so clearly in his mind. “He treated me and Bucky to a Dodgers game for my twenty-first birthday. I got drunk that day, and it was the first time I saw the arc reactor — except I didn’t know it had a name then. I taught him to darn socks. He was the one who told me my ma died. He used to go with me to lay lilies on her grave. He got pneumonia, and he probably would have died except he just — disappeared instead.”

Natasha came back to stand next to him. “How is that even possible?”

Steve let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “I don’t know, Natasha,” he said, leaning back a little to look at her. “We fought aliens a few months ago. Against one Norse god with another on our side. I was born in 1918. How is any of this possible?”

Natasha tucked her hand in the crook of Steve’s arm and led him back to the couch. She settled in the corner, still nestled in her blanket, and pulled him down, his head against her thigh. She gently scratched at his scalp with her nails. “You loved him,” she then said, no question in her tone.

“I love him,” he echoed. “But this version — it’s not the same. This version is so — closed off and brittle. Before, he was more open, less —“ Steve trailed off, unable to find the right word.

“Wary?” Natasha offered.

Steve nodded under her hand. “It was easier then, for some reason. He doesn’t let anything go, doesn’t let his guard down, and I don’t know how to get past that.”

“You miss him.”

“Yes,” Steve said, letting out a breath. He could feel his tears soaking the blanket under his cheek. 

“ _Luchik_ , how long have you been carrying this burden?” she asked, her fingers still gently kneading into his scalp, soothing as they kept a steady rhythm.

“Since Shield gave me his file, along with all the other ones.”

Natasha made a sympathetic noise deep in her throat. “So that’s why you didn’t want to read his file,” she said at last. “How did you find out he doesn’t like getting his face wet?”

Steve felt himself relax into the couch cushions, tension leaking out of his muscles until he felt calmer than he had since he’d woken up. He hadn’t realized how relieved he would feel once someone else knew. “He got pneumonia, right before Christmas. He was okay for a while, but it got so bad he couldn’t even catch his breath to go up or down the stairs in our tenement building. I helped him draw a bath with peppermint and eucalyptus oil to help him breathe easier. Then I put a towel over his head to help catch the steam, because that can help loosen things up.” Steve paused, gesturing to his chest with one hand. “I had a lot of experience with that,” he added. “I could tell he hated it. He had a breakdown — what do you call it now? — a panic attack. From the wet towel over his face. Well, and probably because he couldn’t breath from the pneumonia. So I had him lean on the edge of the tub instead and draped the towel over his shoulders and arms. It helped him relax.”

Steve felt Natasha shift, and he looked back over his shoulder to see her shaking her head. “Steve, Tony was captured in Afghanistan by terrorists during a weapons demonstration there. They wanted him to build weapons for them. They tortured him — holding his head underwater in a bucket to get him to cooperate.”

Steve stiffened, no longer relaxed and suddenly cold. “What do you mean?”

“Did you look at his file at all?” Natashas fingers paused, her hand warm against his hair.

“I looked at the sheet on the front. The arc reactor — it was different before.”

“The terrorists bombed his convoy in Afghanistan. In the blast when they took him — he was hit with shrapnel, and it lodged near his heart.” Natasha paused, and Steve felt her move beneath his head, the muscle in her thigh bunching up as she tucked her legs underneath her, turning to curl more around him. “That kind of injury — having shrapnel that close to his heart — it can kill a person in a matter of days once it migrates into the heart itself. The terrorists made a man named Yinsen hook him up to a car battery — it powered a magnet that kept the shrapnel from shifting.”

“A heart condition,” Steve said, his voice faint. He rolled over, burying his face into Natasha’s stomach. “He told me he had a _heart condition_. I thought he meant something like mine — something you could _live_ with.”

Natasha cradled Steve’s head, cupping the crown of his blond hair in her palm. “I don’t think they ever intended for him to live for very long after he built the Jericho. He lived in fear of either drowning in the water or electrocuting himself when they shoved his head in the bucket.”

“Jesus, Nat,” Steve breathed, feeling his hot, moist breath catch in her tank top and come back at him. “Jesus Christ.”

“He built that first arc reactor in the cave — the one in the picture on the front of the Shield file — and then he used it to power a version of his Iron Man suit to get him out,” she said. “The one he has now, he built to keep him from getting palladium poisoning. That’s how I met him — I posed as an SI employee for Shield while he was figuring all of that out.”

“He built the arc reactor in a _cave_?” Steve said. He leaned back to look up at her. “It’s — it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Natasha looked down at him, a faint smile on her face. She brushed his hair off his forehead. “Me too, _luchik_.”

“I drew it over and over again. When he told me it helped him with a heart condition, I —“ Steve stopped, suddenly embarrassed. Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, and he continued, “Well, I asked him if it would fix my heart too.”

“That’s — sweet,” she said, “but I’m guessing he had to let you down gently.”

“I think that’s when I first realized I loved him,” Steve said, feeling his cheeks warm at the admission. “He told me they’d find a cure for my heart problems. I thought he was lying to me.” Steve sighed and found Natasha looking down at him intently, her green eyes unblinking.

“You realized you loved him when he refused to give you the arc reactor out of his chest?” she echoed, the skepticism clear in her voice.

“No,” Steve answered, and he huffed a little. “I’d never seen anything like it. He was so clever with his hands, and he could fix anything — he told Bucky there wasn’t a thing in the world he couldn’t fix when they first met. He never told me, but I knew he had to have made the arc reactor. A man who could make a thing like that? Something that beautiful that could be used to save his life?” Steve trailed off and shrugged.

“That’s the man you fell in love with,” Natasha finished for him.

“He told me —“ Steve had to stop, feeling the tears choke him and close off his throat. He cleared it roughly. “He told me that, if he could, he’d give it to me in an instant.” A quiet sob worked its way out of his mouth, and Steve hid his face again. “Where is that Tony Stark, Nat? Where is that man, who wanted to give me the most beautiful thing in the world?”

“Oh, _luchik_ ,” Natasha whispered into his hair. “He’s still the same man. He just thinks he has something better to offer you than himself. Money. Things. He thinks those material things he can give you are worth so much more. But he’s wrong.”

Steve sobbed again, feeling the damp fabric of her tank top bunch up under his cheek. He cried until exhaustion overtook him, falling asleep with his head buried in Natasha’s lap, her fingers combing through his hair.


	4. Deeply and Without Patience

Steve woke up the next morning, his face smashed into the crook of Natasha’s knee. She had slid down into the couch and was curled up against the arm. He was still exhausted but felt lighter, as though he’d been hollowed out and part of his burden removed.

She stirred when he sat up, rubbing at his eyes and shielding them from the light pouring in the northern windows, slanting from east to west across the floor. Her hair floated around her head like a frizzy halo, and she had a crease in one cheek from a wrinkle in the pillow she’d shoved under her head.

_My first friend here,_ he suddenly thought, and joy swelled up within him.

It was the first time he could remember being truly happy since he’d woken up in this century.

“Get changed,” she said, running a hand through her wild curls and stifling a yawn. “We’re getting bagels.”

Steve laughed for a moment, delighted at the thought of having someone to do these kinds of spontaneous things with, someone who could help fill the sometimes endless hours in the tower. “What if I want to run first?” he challenged, just to see what her reaction was.

Natasha turned towards him and froze, warning in every line of her body. “Bagels first,” she said ominously, “and then I’ll put you through your paces in the gym. You won’t need a run.”

Things seemed a little easier after that. He could tell that Tony was avoiding him — he stopped coming to dinner, and Steve suspected that Jarvis kept him appraised of Steve’s movements so that they didn’t accidentally bump into each other. Steve still felt the ache of Tony’s absence, but it didn’t hurt as much with Natasha.

She told him about her childhood, about being an orphan before she was selected to serve the Motherland. When she spoke of her training in the Red Room, it was very detached and clinical, and Steve got the strong impression that she left a lot out. She spoke of the deal she brokered with Peggy, with Clint as an intermediary, to defect from the KGB and join Shield. She even told him of some of her time as Tony’s personal assistant, although Steve could tell she was protecting his privacy by not discussing a lot of what happened.

He got to know Natasha much better, and it didn’t take long for him to realize that he could learn just as much about her by the things she left out, the holes in her stories, as he could from what she said. She hadn’t lied when she’d told him she’d grown up poor too; she talked about the cold winters in Moscow when she was little before she went to the Red Room, hidden away deep in the Caucaus Mountains. She’d seen it as a way out of poverty and want, but life there had only been marginally better. As she grew up in the Red Room, she saw the skills she learned there as a promise that she would always be able to take care of herself, no matter what else happened. It was a sentiment that resonated with Steve — even sick, he’d never wanted to be a burden.

In return, Steve took her to Brooklyn.

It was a warm summer day in the middle of June when they drove across the Brooklyn Bridge. Steve took her to the Evergreens Cemetery, and they sat in front of his parents’ headstones. There were still trinkets and flowers there, but sun and rain had faded them from the brilliant red, white, and blues to muted, dingy colors. Steve took off his dog tags and showed Natasha the St. Monica medal. She rang her fingers over it reverently, the metal still warm from his skin.

“You would have liked her, and she you,” Steve told Natasha as they walked back down the hill to their car, the grass a brilliant emerald under their feet. “She fought in the Easter Rising for Ireland’s freedom. She only came to America because my father made her. She was the bravest person I ever knew. She didn’t know how to stay down.”

Natasha threw back her head and laughed. She linked her arm through Steve. “I know a little of what that’s like. She sounds like a wonderful woman. Too bad Director Carter never had the opportunity to meet her,” she added, her eyes sparkling conspiratorially.

It was Steve’s turn to laugh at that. “They would have been unstoppable. The world wouldn’t have known what hit it.”

Steve showed her the Navy Yard where Bucky had worked and where their tenement apartment used to be. She was surprisingly quiet during his stories about Bucky, watching with her bright, thoughtful eyes that didn’t miss a single thing. “You still miss him,” she said, merely stating a fact, as they stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the building that had since been gutted and remodeled many times over. 

Steve gave her a sidewise glance. “He fell off the train in the Alps, and with that we got Zola. He gave us the intel that got us to the Red Skull two days later. I woke up here, and we fought the Battle of New York two weeks after that. It’s been — what? Six weeks since then?”

Natasha shrugged. “I’m simply making an observation. Not a judgment. And how long were you alone in this previous life you’re showing me? You never knew your father because he died before you were born — don’t look at me like that, we just visited his grave, and I can do the math,” she said peevishly. “You lived with your mother until you moved in with James—“

“James?” Steve interrupted.

“— and you lived with him until he shipped out. Apparently with Tony for a few months. Then you went to Camp LeHigh. Even after you became Captain America, you still toured with those chorus girls and the guy who played Hitler. And then you joined the Howling Commandos, who you were with until the day you put the Valkyrie in the water,” Natasha finished. “And then you wake up here, in your empty apartment and go on your solitary road trip.”

“I needed to get away —“

“How many days had you spent alone before you woke up here?”

“I —“ Steve tried to protest again before he stopped to actually consider her question. “I can’t remember,” Steve said after a long pause. He gestured up at the building, trying to figure out a way to explain. “It was different back then — it was the Depression. No one had the kind of money to live alone. At least no one I knew, and certainly no one who lived in Brooklyn. Maybe if you lived in Manhattan. You were born into your family, you lived with your family your whole life, and then you died surrounded by your family. Maybe you got married and moved out, maybe you had kids, but by the time your kids were grown, your parents moved in because they need someone to help take care of them. If you didn’t have family, you lived with friends who were as good as. If you were lucky, you only shared a bathtub with your neighbors. If you were unlucky, you also shared a toilet.”

Steve turned around and spread his arms wide, taking in the whole block. “I knew the name of everyone who lived here. The couple who lived above us would get in an argument every Thursday night, when she drank too much because of the baby, and then again every Friday, when he came home late after drinking with his co-workers. They made up and had sex every Sunday. The people across the hall always complained about me playing the radio, and I swear to God, they threw a party after it broke.”

He stopped, turning back to the building, looking up to the window on the fourth floor, and Natasha saw tears in his eyes. “You’re right — Bucky was always there. He worked nights, so it was like he was never gone. It was comforting, to hear him snoring in the bedroom while I drew, to know he was always right there. Even when Ma died and Tony disappeared, he was there. And then he got called up. What was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to go?”

Steve turned abruptly and stalked down the street. Natasha caught up with him in a few swift strides and grabbed his arm. He yanked it out of her grasp, glaring down at her for a moment, the frustration and grief warring on his face. “Steve,” she said, “what I’m trying to say is you don’t have to be alone. No wonder you’re struggling — not only are you living in a new place and time, you’re trying to do it without any support.”

“It was a mistake to come back,” Steve spat, “a sentimental, stupid mistake.”

Natasha rolled her eyes before squaring her shoulders. “Want me to beat you up in an alley to make you feel more at home?” she shot back.

“What?” Steve asked.

And then she sucker punched him.

Steve grunted when her fist connected with his stomach, more startled than hurt, and watched as she danced out of his reach. “Natasha Romanov, did you just pull your punch?” he asked, incredulous.

“Are you done making assumptions about what I’m trying to tell you? Are you going to listen to me now? Because you’re being worse than Clint, and I didn’t know that was even possible!”

Steve felt his mouth open then close again, but no sound came out. “Good,” Natasha said, the satisfaction clear in her voice. She crowded into his space and grabbed his dog tags through his shirt, dragging him down to her height. “Now you have a choice to make: you can keep trying to do this by yourself — pretend that it’s enough, to be alone in your apartment that Tony gave you. That the Avengers are enough, even though we haven’t done a single thing all together since the Battle of New York. Pretend that you’re happy eating alone, walking around the city alone, going to that cafe and drawing the tower alone. But we both know it’s not enough. I know that you haven’t bought a single thing on your own — nothing in your apartment is really yours. Everything you own was bought by either Tony or Shield. I know that you haven’t bought a single thing to draw with since you got back from your trip. You’re going through the motions, Steven Grant Rogers, and you have a choice to make. You can stop trying to do this by yourself — stop being _afraid_ — and you can choose to build a life here, let other people in. You could befriend Tony and see if the man that you knew from before is in there. Or you can keep doing what you’re doing. Keep pretending, keep everyone at a distance, keep going at it alone. What are you more afraid of, Steve — being alone because you choose to be or taking a risk that might lead to having a life — a real life — here?”

Steve jerked away, his dog tags pulling out of her grasp. “I’m _trying_!” he shouted back at her. “What else do you want me to do? I went on that road trip because I thought I could get my head on straight, and look at me!” He pointed back to the tenement building, half a block away, and Natasha could tell he was pointing exactly to the window that had been theirs on the fourth floor. “Back in Brooklyn, looking up at that apartment like I want to go back! Like that life of perpetual hunger and struggle, of being too cold or too hot, of being one bad cold away from dying just like my ma — like that life was better! Like I want to go back!”

“Do you?” Natasha asked quietly.

Steve gasped for breath, his chest heaving as he sucked the air in and out. “What?” he asked, tearing his gaze away from the tenement building to look down at her. “What did you say?”

“Do you want to go back?”

Steve blinked at her. “Why would I?” he answered finally. His shoulders slumped, and he looked around at the neighborhood, the green leaves fluttering in the breeze with the red brick buildings behind them, as though it would offer some further explanation. “I mean, you have these phones that can answer all of your questions — and you can watch baseball on TV if you can’t afford the tickets — and food that’s cheaper, lasts longer, and is easier to make — and antibiotics and vaccines so people like me — I mean, how I used to be — people like me don’t die from infections.” He paused, still breathing heavily, before adding, “You can treat TB.”

“We still can’t cure falling from over a hundred feet into an icy cold river,” Natasha said, mimicking his gesture of looking around. “Neighbors are less friendly. You know more about your old ones than the current ones.” She pulled out her cell phone and waved it at him. “People would rather spend all day looking at these than talking to each other. If you could — would you go back?”

Steve walked back down the street to stand in front of his old building. The bakery storefront had been split into two different shops: an insurance office and a small coffee shop with a sign out front advertising that they roast their own beans. Even though he hadn’t been inside, Steve was positive someone had renovated the building, turning the railroad apartments into more conventional layouts. 

“What’s there to go back to?” he said. “Ma still died in ’39, and Bucky still fell in ’45. Peg clearly did well enough without me.”

“You’d have the Howling Commandos. You could shape the future of Shield, be there with Director Carter to build it. Howard would be there.”

Steve shook his head and looked back down the street, away from the red brick. In his mind, he could still see it so perfectly — the radio in the kitchen, the boiler keeping the kitchen warm, the afghans on the back couch, the drafting table with his latest project, the two twin beds in the back room. But the apartment — and the life that he had lived there — didn’t exist any more. It was gone, as if it had never existed, like the body Steve had lived in for so many years before Project Rebirth. “I guess.” 

He shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking away. Natasha fell in next to him, slipping an arm through one of his elbows. “I guess I expected a little more enthusiasm about that idea, even if it’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible — Tony did it. Or will do it, at some point,” Steve corrected himself. “But while I may be lonely, there’s at least a future for me here. Tony is here.” Steve paused and put his hand over hers, gently squeezing her fingers. “You’re here.”

“It’s not so bad,” she conceded. “I guess I’m surprised — I thought you would have preferred to go back.”

“Wasn’t it Stalin who said not one step backwards?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, her expression grim. “I wouldn’t exactly recommend him as someone to base your life choices on.”

“No love lost for the communists?”

“One dictatorship to another,” she answered with a shrug. “I was 7 years old when the USSR collapsed, not that it made a big difference in the Red Room. The uniforms changed color, but the rest of life didn’t change. Let’s just say I wouldn’t go back either.”

Steve sighed. “Natasha, can we go home?”

Natasha stopped, and, with her arm threaded through Steve’s, it pulled him to a stop as well. “Are you feeling all right, Steve Rogers? Is Brooklyn no longer home to you? I thought you made it a point to tell everyone you met that you’re just a boy from Brooklyn!”

Throwing back his head, Steve let out a laugh, although there wasn’t a lot of humor to the sound. “I’ll always be from here. But maybe it’s more important where you’re going.” He looked over his shoulder for a moment before tugging Natasha back into motion. “But I don’t think I have to explain that to you.”

(★)

Natasha was the one who told him that Tony had pneumonia a few weeks later. Steve had to admire her preparation: she invited him down to her apartment, got him settled on the couch with a blanket, some popcorn, and a movie before she said anything. He was perfectly content, slouched down into the couch with the warm, solid bulk of her thigh beneath his cheek, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He was even starting to drowse, something he couldn’t usually do with the TV on. She had her fingers in his hair, gently scratching at his scalp with her nails the way he liked. “Just so you know,” she said, her voice soft and pitched low so it only just penetrated his wandering, sleepy thoughts, “Tony is being observed overnight in the Tower medical facilities. Bruce told me he has pneumonia. They’re giving him antibiotics.”

Steve startled, knocking the bowl of popcorn off Natasha’s lap and scattering it all over the floor. He threw off the blanket and scrambled into a sitting position before Natasha grabbed his wrist. “Pneumonia? Antibiotics?” Steve said, a little frantically. He tried to pull his wrist from Natasha’s grasp, but she wouldn’t let go. “Is he okay? What do you mean, observed in a medical facility?”

“Stop,” she commanded, giving his wrist a little jerk. “You have to stop. You can’t go visit him if you’re going to be like this, and I know that’s the next thing you’re going to want to do.”

“What does it mean to have pneumonia in this century?” Steve said, still trying to extract his wrist from Natasha. “Is he going to be okay?”

“When you’re Tony Stark, it means you have your own doctor on call 24/7 — and I don’t mean Bruce. I mean the one Pepper makes him see when he’s actually sick. It means they’ll give him some oxygen and IV antibiotics, which will treat his pneumonia. Bruce said he usually stays one night, two at the most, and he’s back to his usual self within a week. No breathing tubes or ventilators, no long term issues. He’s just more susceptible because of the arc reactor.” She finally released his arm, and he rubbed at it absently as he searched her eyes, looking for her level of concern.

“The arc reactor? But he told me it _helps_ him.” Steve fumbled for a moment before grabbing his dog tags, running his thumb over the St. Monica medal through his t-shirt.

“It helps his heart,” Natasha said. She reached over and covered his hand with hers, gently squeezing his fingers. “But it takes up space in his chest — space normally reserved for his lungs. So he’s a little more at risk for respiratory problems. I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea.”

Steve dropped his head, running his other hand through his hair. “You could say that,” he said into his chest.

Natasha snorted. “But it’s not the death sentence you’re thinking of.”

Closing his eyes, he let go of his dog tags and covered his face with his hands. All he could see was the gray pallor of Tony’s skin as he alternated between shivering and sweating through the sheets on the narrow bed, twisted up in the blankets as he tossed and turned. He could hear the rattling of Tony’s breath echo in his ears, the fitful coughing and wheezing. “That’s harder to believe when I’ve already watched it once,” Steve said, his voice muffled by his hands.

His comment was met with silence, and once he realized that Natasha hadn’t reacted, he looked at her. Her lips were compressed, her fingers laced together in her lap so tightly that the knuckles were turning white. “He’s not going to die,” she said forcefully. “He’s _not_.”

“You can’t promise that,” Steve said, but there was only exhaustion in his voice.

Natasha stood and grabbed his wrist. Initially he resisted her pulling him to his feet before giving in. Her grip was tight enough he could feel the skin pinching between her nails, the bones in his wrist grinding a little when he rotated his forearm in her grasp. She stalked over to the elevator and punched the button angrily. It arrived almost immediately, and she pulled him in before the doors were fully open. She let go of his wrist and stabbed at the floor for the medical suite, crossing her arms tightly over her chest when she stepped back next to him.

They rode in silence for a few moments. In a whirlwind of movement, Natasha turned on Steve and poked him in the chest, hard. “He’s not going to die,” she snapped, emphasizing each word with another poke to his sternum. Steve just sighed.

The elevator opened out into the small waiting area of the medical suite, where the lights were off for the evening. There was no formal front desk, as the facilities were only for the Avengers, and Natasha slipped through the shadows and between the chairs swiftly. Steve marveled at her for a moment, the way she was completely silent, somehow even the rustle of her clothing inaudible to his serum-enhanced hearing. As she moved past the glass divider that separated the waiting room from the hallway leading to the treatment rooms, Steve followed her, reluctance slowing his footsteps.

There was dim light spilling into the hallway from one of the rooms near the end, and Steve could hear the faint, even beeping of the pulse oximeter. They passed a workstation, where a nurse glanced up from a book she was reading at the desk. She nodded once at them in recognition, her eyes flickering to the monitor in front of her, before turning a page in her book.

Steve joined her in the doorway and felt his breath come out in a sharp gasp. Tony was curled up in the hospital bed asleep, a light blanket pooled around his waist. One of his hands was covering the arc reactor, which gleamed faintly through the cotton of his t-shirt. He had a nasal cannula in his nose, and there was a clear liquid hanging on the IV pole. The IV pump itself offered up the name of the drug — Zosyn — as well as its dosage and rate. There was a monitor over the bed, showing his heart rate at a comforting 68 while he slept, his saturations a little low at 93%. It beeped in time with his heart rate, the pitch sometimes varying up or down as the saturations fluctuated on the monitor.

“See?” Natasha whispered, gesturing to Tony with one hand. “Not dead.”

Steve longed to turn on all the overhead lights to look at the color of Tony’s skin. Even in the glare of the monitor and the reflected lights of Manhattan from the window, Steve could pick out the flush of red over his cheeks, the faint gleam of sweat at his hairline. Steve forced himself to remember that this Tony was healthier — he wasn’t malnourished from months of eating during the Depression, and he trained daily with either Happy or one of the Avengers to stay in fighting shape. This Tony did the heavy lifting in his workshop and drank protein shakes offered by Dum-E even when he was too busy to eat. He had fresh fruit and vegetables, the finest restaurants New York could offer, and Pepper and Jarvis kept a sharp eye on him when Tony was being neglectful of his own health.

But.

But the doubt still lingered in Steve’s mind, insidiously creeping in at the edges. The smell of Tony’s sweat and fever was still in his nose, and it was easy for Steve to recall the musty feel of the bedroom in the tenement apartment when Tony had been sick, the humid heat from the radiators that warmed the building, the perpetually damp feeling of the blankets and sheets even when they were clean, the contrast of the chilly hallway with the hot steam of the bathroom when Steve had helped Tony bathe, that first day he’d been unable to go down the stairs on his own.

He could feel the terror creeping in, the feeling that had engulfed him that day Tony had disappeared. The numbing cold started at his feet, seeping in like it had that morning when he’d run out into the snow barefoot. It spread through his limbs into his torso, wrapping itself around his heart, squeezing until it felt hard for him to breathe.

_Is this how it feels, Tony? To have the arc reactor in your chest, that heaviness and cold always there?_ he wondered, looking at the hospital bed where Tony slept on, oblivious, clearly drained from the pneumonia.

But he knew it wasn’t — he’d felt the arc reactor before, not quite a hundred years and another lifetime before. The metal casing around the outside had been surprisingly warm to the touch from Tony’s body, and the reactor itself had been cooler than Steve had expected, given the warm blue light it gave off.

The cold spread, and Steve felt dizzy for a moment, confusion following quickly behind. Had someone beaten him up recently? — he couldn’t remember. He felt his head cock to the side, the hospital equipment and monitors suddenly unfamiliar, the smell — not of bleach and starch, but some milder cleaner with the sharp undercurrent of alcohol — out of place. Even his body felt wrong, too heavy and bulky, his clothes too tight, the fabric too soft. Tony was familiar, but he was back in strange clothes like the day Steve had found him in the alley.

Suddenly concerned, he looked down at his hands, expecting to seem them scraped up, how they usually looked when he’d gotten into a fight that he’d inevitably lost. But his hands were clean and whole, fingers still long and thin but his palms broader than he remembered. The movement made his vision swim, and the world tilted off its axis, the dizziness and confusion overwhelming him in a rush.

Steve came back to himself on the floor in the doorway to Tony’s hospital room. A face with a concerned expression hovered above him, and it took Steve a minute to realize it was Natasha. Tony was still asleep on the hospital bed, and Steve blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Natasha helped him back to his feet. Her eyes searched his for a moment, but she didn’t ask any questions, and Steve was grateful he didn’t have to lie to her when he would have answered.

“I’m just going to —“ Steve started, hooking a thumb over his shoulder towards the chair next to the hospital bed.

“Yeah, I figured,” Natasha answered. She squeezed his elbow gently, arm still there to support in case Steve needed it. She drew in a long breath, and Steve looked away, bracing himself as she decided to ask anyway. “Are you okay?”

Steve moved into the room, his bulk becoming indistinct around the edges as he moved past the light from the hallway. He hovered in that space that was not quite the room but definitely not the hallway, uncertain. “No,” he said, his face away from Natasha as he watched Tony sleeping on the bed. “I don’t think I am.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Natasha offered. She stood next to him, her hand cool on his arm even through the sleeve of his t-shirt. “You can come sleep on my couch.”

“I think I do.” Steve’s hand came up to his chest, and Natasha saw him rub at his dog tags before slipping his fingers under the hem of the neckline to worry at the chain. His shoulders hunched up, and she could see the tightness in his arms and across his back as the strain pulled the cotton of his shirt tight.

Natasha blew out her breath, exasperated. “You could talk to him.”

“And say what? You travel back in time? No pressure, but I fell in love with you, and I’m having a hard time separating that from now? Oh, and don’t forget, you get pneumonia back then and, instead of dying, you just disappeared.” Steve dropped his hand and shoved both of them into his pockets.

“He’d believe you.”

Steve shrugged his shoulders and moved out of her reach. “Maybe,” he said, the skepticism clear in his voice.

Natasha sighed, stepping back out into the hallway. “You know where to find me when this doesn’t work out the way you think it should,” she tossed over her shoulder as she left.

Steve shuffled around the edge of the hospital bed, taking care not to walk into the corner of it in the dark. He stood at the foot, just watching. The monitor was pointed towards the door, and Steve watched as the blue line of the saturations rose and fell evenly with Tony’s heartbeat like waves on a beach. He stood there a long time, watching the light from the window shift across the room as the traffic moved through the city and lights flickered on and off. The pitch from the pulse oximeter slowly crept up, keeping pace with the numbers as they went from 93% to 96%. He could see Tony’s chest gently rise and fall in the dim light, the small whuff carrying across the room when Tony exhaled. Every once in a while, Tony would shift, finding a more comfortable position for an arm or a leg. One hand always remained over the arc reactor, the fingers splayed out with the light shining between them.

Feeling a little light-headed again, Steve settled into the chair next to the hospital bed, facing out towards the door. He couldn’t see the monitor anymore, but the beep continued, soothing with its regular intervals and pitch that only varied subtly, beat to beat. The sound lulled Steve, and the room took on a surreal quality, softening around the edges. It reminded Steve of being drunk, of the night after the Dodgers game when he’d turned 21.

His vision swam for a moment, the room going unfocused, and Steve felt more than remembered the warm heaviness of his limbs that night from being out all day in the sun, the looseness of being comfortable with friends, of a few beers in his stomach. Of being full and happy, literally sustained by Tony’s gifts of food and drink.

The blue of the arc reactor filled his vision as he focused on it, more beautiful than the numbers on the monitor. Steve wanted to reach out and feel Tony’s chest, feel his warmth underneath his own skin, put his palm over the arc reactor and see the play of the light between his fingers. He could feel it, the imprint of the metal casing, as though it had been burned into the tips of his fingers like his own fingerprints. Tony’s own skin had been hot that night, the sweat over his chest gliding under Steve’s fingers, the damp and the salt still on his hand even after he had stopped touching Tony.

Steve could remember the smell of Tony from that night, and it rose into his mind when he closed his eyes, the blue of the arc reactor still there. Warm skin, with the faint undertone of Ivory soap and sweat and coconut overlying the earthy smell of hot metal that seemed to follow Tony wherever he went, in both this century and the last.

But the comforting smell was suddenly gone, replaced by the one that had permeated the same room much later, the sickly sweet miasma of phlegm, of days’ old sweat soaked into sheets, the smell that followed the cycle of fever then chills, sweat on hot skin then cold.

Steve huffed out a sob, scrubbing a hand over his face. When he opened his eyes, Tony was still there, asleep, with the monitor beeping reassuringly in the background. His breath came rough and heavy, and Steve struggled to control it, not wanting to wake Tony up.

Exhaustion washed over him, and his mind drifted to what Tony had said, delirious with fever and pneumonia, caught between two centuries, confused as to why the Steve before him was so scrawny and unimpressive when the Steve he’d left behind was so much _more_.

It made him sad to remember, the certainty in Tony’s voice when he’d insisted that Steve didn’t like him, the confidence that Steve could save the world.

Tony had been so sure that Steve could, and all he’d done was let Tony down.

In the dark room, with the antibiotics slowly dripping in and the hum of the air moving through vents, the beeping of the pulse ox and the rustle as Tony moved on the bed, Steve’s fears began to creep in. He knew how sick Tony had been those last few days in January 1940 — and if he hadn’t known, he had certainly seen it in Bucky’s face, an expression Steve wasn’t used to seeing his friend direct at other people. Tony had wasted away, hardly able to drink enough to stay hydrated, let alone eat enough. The Depression had already melted away most of the fat Tony had had from his life in the 21st century, but the ongoing infection had burned the rest of it away, until Tony had been left gaunt, all sharp lines and angles. With nothing else to offer, Steve had resolved to give Tony the only thing Steve was able to give — his friendship. Unlike his ma, who had died presumably alone in the TB ward, Steve was determined to be there until the bitter end. Steve had been grateful that Bucky understood without making him talk about it, sitting by the bedside whenever Steve couldn’t be there.

It had made Tony’s disappearance all the more upsetting, that Steve hadn’t even been there for those last few moments.

_Is this when it happens?_ Steve wondered. _Does he somehow carry this with him to 1939? Or was he traveling back and forth the whole time, and we never knew?_

_Did he disappear in 1940, come back only and die in 2012?_

Steve ducked his head at the thought, settling it into his hands as he finally let himself think the unimaginable. He wished Natasha were still there, her presence comforting, even knowing he would never tell her what he was thinking. _What’s the point — why bother making him disappear, only to die here instead?_ He’d always found it such a comfort, something he could cling to — Tony wasn’t dead, just gone back to wherever it was he’d come from in the first place.

He was such an idiot.

The light suddenly clicked on, and Steve looked up, startled, to find Tony staring at him. Tony gaped back before asking, “What are you doing here?”

Steve looked away, feeling his cheeks warm. Of course Tony had no idea why he’d come to sit by his hospital bed. There was no way for him to know. It wasn’t even like they were friends — Tony had made it clear he was trying to stay away after the fiasco with Jarvis and tracking how much Steve ate. Steve struggled for a moment before settling on the truth. He aimed for wide-eyed, naive, sanitized truth. 

He didn’t even come close.

“Nat told me you have pneumonia. She said that you have medications to treat it now.” Steve heard the wobble in his voice, and he paused, swallowing slowly. He could do this. He had to do this. “I just needed to see for myself that you were okay.”

Tony’s expression shifted at Steve’s explanation, and Steve could tell he didn’t believe him. “I’m fine. The doctor usually makes me stay overnight — get some IV antibiotics in me, a little oxygen. I’ll be back to driving you crazy tomorrow,” Tony responded. Steve was surprised — and a little relieved — to find that Tony also seemed out of sorts, his joke falling flat. 

The failure of the joke settled Steve a little bit. Ever since he’d met Tony after being found in the Arctic, the other man had seemed larger than life, unapproachable in a way that Tony had never been during the Depression. Steve had given it a lot of thought, and it had taken him a long time to realize that, even in the Tower — his own home — he was always putting on some kind of show. Mostly, it was the Amazing Tony Stark show, the media personality that flashed peace signs and made snarky remarks to the press. As he became more comfortable, it morphed into the Tony’s Okay show, that Tony could work for days on end in his workshop, alone, barely eating or sleeping, until he staggered up to the penthouse and collapsed.

Steve recognized this because he was putting on his own version of that show. Instead of the bond salesman performance, Steve had the I’m Adjusting Just Fine show.

Of course, in retrospect, it wasn’t particularly convincing, as both Tony and Nat had seen right through it. But then again, neither was Tony’s. They just all tacitly agreed not to call each other on their bullshit.

But this — the failed joke — was a reminder that Tony was simply human, a comforting glimpse of the real person beneath, the person whom Steve had met and lived with in 1939.

That person then dug into his pocket and produced the monitor attached to his EKG leads and pulse ox, offering it to Steve. Steve’s hands reached out, completely independent from his mind, and took the monitor from Tony, their fingers brushing as he handed off the small plastic case.

Dimly, Steve was aware that Tony was talking to him, although he couldn’t sort out the individual words. Blood was roaring in his ears. The shy smile Tony had given him as he’d offered the monitor, coupled with the gesture of trying to comfort Steve, to give him data to help Steve understand that Tony was okay — that was more the Tony Steve had known from before than anything else Steve had seen Tony do in this century.

Steve gently cradled the monitor in his hands, the display a mirror image of the monitor above the hospital. It felt small and precious to him, as though Tony had handed off a piece of himself to Steve.

He was concentrating so hard on the monitor, Steve almost missed what Tony said about getting a doctor. Steve’s head come up abruptly, meeting Tony’s eyes. He gaped for a moment before the fury washed over him. A doctor. To explain to him that Tony would be fine. The last fucking doctor Steve had talked to had been Dr. Hudson, four days before his ma died. He’d called for an update, since Bucky wouldn’t let him visit. _Everything is fine,_ Dr. Hudson had said. _Your mother is doing well. She spent a long afternoon in the garden today and is in good spirits. She’ll have a letter for your friend in a few days._

But there was no letter. The next day, her cough had worsened. The day after that, she started coughing up blood. The day after that — the day before Tony visited to get the letter that wasn’t there and instead was given her wedding band, her St. Monica medal, and her calla lily pin — she bled into her lungs and either drowned from the blood or hemorrhaged to death.

No, he didn’t want to talk to a fucking doctor.

The surprise was obvious in Tony’s expression, and he was clearly shocked by the anger in Steve’s voice as he spat out, “No thanks. They just tell you everything’s going to be fine, even when you know it’s not.”

“I don’t think they’re allowed to do that,” Tony managed.

Steve shook his head. He wanted to yell at Tony, to let out the sudden rage at all of this, the entire ridiculous situation. Steve could see it play out: he would stand up and scream at Tony, tell him how he went back in time and _made him fall in love with him_ before he died or disappeared or whatever happened. Tony had given him hope, that maybe he wouldn’t be alone forever once Bucky married, which of course didn’t happen either. And with Tony gone and Bucky dead, Steve had crashed the Valkyrie into the Arctic Ocean. 

That was supposed to have been the end of it.

Instead, he’d woken up here, with Tony so close — so very close — and yet still unreachable. It was like they were on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, with Natasha next to Steve, telling him how he could use the mud and sticks to build a set of wings and fly over to Tony, to reclaim what they’d had before. Maybe it had been unspoken, and maybe Steve had imagined most of it — but it had been his. It had made him happy.

It had been enough.

The memory of how Tony had looked at him then — scrawny, feisty Steve, who was too loud, and fought too much, and dreamed too big — it was something that Steve could have lived with the rest of his days. He could have lived with that Tony, who fixed his radio and had told him with tears in his eyes that someday Steve would be the person on the outside that he felt like on the inside, that they would fix his size and his heart and his lungs, all of the things that were wrong with him.

Steve would have been happy in that body and that apartment with that life during that time — if only Tony had been there.

“Look, I know we’re not very close,” Steve ground out, every word like a stab to his heart. He leaned forward in the chair, his elbows back on his knees, put his head in his hands, and looked at the floor. He knew he’d never be able to get through this if he looked at Tony. “But if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk to the doctor and just stay here. It’ll make me feel better. It’s not like I’ll sleep if I go back to my room anyway, knowing you’re here.”

He heard the rustle of the bedding as Tony shifted position and his response of, “Sure, if you prefer.” Steve leaned back in his chair, looking up at the tiles of the drop ceiling. He could hear the hesitation in Tony’s voice when he said, “Sleep well, I guess,” and clicked off the lights.

Tony’s breathing filled the room in the dark, and Steve tried to ignore it, acutely aware that the other man was struggling to fall asleep. He wanted nothing more than to crawl into the hospital bed next to Tony and gather him into his chest. Steve imagined it happening, the images overlaid with the memories of his birthday. Steve could gently pull off Tony’s t-shirt, somehow untangling it from the IV and the wires from the pulse ox, EKG leads, and blood pressure cuff. Steve’s arm would be warm against Tony’s side, his fingers resting on the smooth metal casing of the arc reactor, bare skin touching from shoulder to fingertips. He could bury his nose into Tony’s hair, smelling the hot metal and coconut that always seemed to surround Tony. Steve could finally relax that way — completely relax in a way he hadn’t in this century. Even sick, Tony would watch over him, the way he had before.

Steve had no concept of time passing while he turned that image over and over in his mind. He could smell mint and eucalyptus hanging heavy in the steam from the bath, the feel of Tony’s muscles and bones under Steve’s hands as he helped Tony get cleaned up. Darning the socks. The machines that Tony fixed. The new suits and hat and the hot summer day, the lukewarm beer as they watched the Dodgers beat the Cubs on a perfect 4th of July. Tony watching Steve draw at the drafting table as he sketched out his designs.

Tony laying out the ring, and the pin, and the medal on the table and holding Steve as he cried over his ma.

The quiet of the cemetery as they sat under that tree and Steve told him about his ma. Trying to explain why he picked fights and got beaten up in alleys. Why, thanks to his ma, he didn’t know how to stay down, how to not fight against bullies, how to keep his mouth shut.

He felt broken into a thousand pieces, shattered across the chair and the floor and the bed, his shards spread over Tony like a blanket. Before, when he’d broken, Steve had offered Tony his broken pieces and one by one, Tony had put them back together for him again. The radio. The arc reactor. The medal.

But this? Maybe even this was too broken for Tony to fix.

The sob escaped his lips, and Steve was only distantly aware that the sound was from him. He knew that he should be ashamed or embarrassed, but he couldn’t even muster up the energy to worry that Tony had heard him.

In the cool gray light of the morning, Steve finally fell asleep, exhausted and overwhelmed.

He woke up again in a panic, startling so violently he almost fell off his chair. It took him a second to place the source of his panic. There were no enemies to be seen, no gunfire whizzing over his head, no frightened Commandos around him rushing to pack up camp and move out as quickly as possible. He realized the soothing beep of the pulse ox had dipped in its pitch, lower than he had ever heard it. The alarm sounded followed, the sharp digital squawking filling the room.

Lurching out of the chair, Steve staggered the few steps over to the bed, his heart beating out of his chest in a way he hadn’t felt since the serum. He pawed at Tony’s shoulder, missing the first time in his dread, before his fingers curled around the joint. Steve shook Tony, a little too roughly at first before Steve reigned in his strength. It took a few moments — a testament to how tired Tony must have been — before Tony also jerked awake, his eyes wide at the expression on Steve’s face. It was only then that Steve realized he was babbling incoherently, a string of pleas directed at Tony falling out of his mouth, one after the other.

Tony grabbed his wrist, but Steve still clung to Tony’s shoulder, terrified that if he let go, Tony would disappear again. “It’s okay, Steve,” he heard Tony say from very far away, quiet compared to the alarms ringing over and over and over again, reverberating through his skull until Steve thought he would never hear silence again. Tony let go of his wrist and looped the clear plastic tube back behind his ears, tucking the cannula into his nostrils. Tony offered Steve the monitor, which read 83% beside the steady up and down of the blue line, still in time with his heartbeat, which was now up to 107, presumably from being shaken awake by a terrified super soldier. 

His legs gave out, and Steve collapsed onto the bed next to Tony. He wanted nothing more than to pull him close to his chest, as if that could keep him from disappearing again. They watched the numbers together as they rose, Tony taking calm, deep breaths next to Steve, while Steve’s breathing came sharp and ragged, short breaths he shrugged to control.  
Steve closed his eyes, remembering the terrible day when Tony had told him his ma had died. He imagined Tony’s hand over his, pressing it into the arc reactor as Tony helped him count his breaths. He found the rhythm within the memory, and when he opened his eyes, his breathing had returned to normal and Tony’s saturations were up to 98%.

When he looked over, Tony was studying him, his expression inscrutable, like he was seeing Steve for the first time as a particularly interesting problem he had never considered before. “See?” Tony said, shaking the monitor a little. “Good as new.”

His chest tightened again, and Steve couldn’t catch his breath. He tried for a few moments, humiliated by the gasping noises he made. Running a hand over his face, Steve tried to hide the flush he could feel creeping up his neck and into his cheeks. “I thought I would feel better being here,” he choked out, stumbling over all the things he couldn’t say. _I wanted to be here for you, if these are your last moments. I wanted to see you get better. I wanted to know you were okay when you disappeared._

_I wanted to tell you everything I never said before — that I love you, that you made me happy._

_That you make me happy._

But Steve couldn’t force the words out. Instead, he faltered, saying, “But I — I don’t think I can do this.”

Forcing himself upright, Steve couldn’t look at Tony. He stumbled around the end of the bed, bracing himself on the plastic footboard as he passed it. He reached the other arm out towards the door once he reached the frame, hesitating again. “I’m sorry,” Steve said, his head bowed, turned away. He wished he could apologize for all of it: the scorching hot days and cold nights, not having enough food, having to darn their socks because they couldn’t buy new ones, begging for his arc reactor, needing Tony’s help to get up after his ma died, Tony getting sick and disappearing, his disappointment in the 21st century, never finding his place, never reconnecting with Tony.

For never being enough, never being the person that Tony saw in the delirium of his pneumonia.

Steve managed to get out into the hall and leaned heavily against the wall next to the doorway to Tony’s room. His knees buckled, and he slid to the floor, burying his face in his hands. The tears fell, from shame at leaving Tony when he was sick, from terror that he was going to die, from the loneliness and emptiness and sadness that had followed him since he’d woken up in the godforsaken time.

And then he heard Tony’s muttered question: “What the fuck was that?”

It shattered his heart.

Using the wall to support himself, he forced himself back up. Somehow Steve made it back down to his room. He stammered out the command to Jarvis to lock all his doors and allow no visitors and slumped down against the window looking out over the East River towards Brooklyn. He knew he was homesick for a place that didn’t exist any more, longing for a time that was long gone. He felt empty without any more tears to cry, his emotions all wrung out.

As he leaned against the window, he remembered the calm that had come over him in the Valkyrie after the Red Skull had disappeared into the hole torn in the very fabric of the universe — not so different from the one Tony had flown into with the nuke. Steve had felt settled, like he could finally lie down and rest. He would put the plane into the water, where the bombs couldn’t hurt anyone, especially anyone in his beloved city. He had completed his mission; he had fulfilled his purpose.

Once the plane crashed, he could finally rest.

As he pointed the noise of the plane towards the water, he’d felt at peace. He would finally see his ma again, and Bucky, even though he’d only been dead a few days. Once he put the plane in the water, once he had fulfilled his ultimate purpose and the war was won, Steve would be able to hug his ma and give her a kiss. He’d feel Bucky’s hand on his shoulder, telling him he’d done good, pal. Maybe even Tony would be there.

His last thought — before the plane crashed, before the water shattered the canopy and knocked Steve unconscious — was that the water was the same shade of blue as the arc reactor.

Steve closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He didn’t sleep, but he tried his hardest to find that peace again, that calm. He thought of the cold of the North Atlantic, the beautiful blue of the ice and water, the satisfaction of his job finished, the relief of finally being able to lie down without the obligation of having to get up again.

The sun rose over Long Island as Steve sat there, motionless for hours, the sky fading from deep blues into pinks and oranges, its light sparkling across the water of the Long Island Sound and the East River. The sky lightened into a light blue — but not quite the _right_ shade of blue — with white clouds doting the sky. The glass warmed against Steve’s skin, but still he replayed those last few moments in the Valkyrie over and over again, curled on the floor, thousands of feet above the city he’d saved.

Jarvis tried to talk to him a few times, but Steve just ignored him, not even registering the words. It wasn’t until he felt the warmth of another person next to him that he shifted, his muscles stiff from sitting in one position for so long.

Opening his eyes, he found Natasha sitting close. She met his gaze — bright green staring into sky blue — before she leaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair was warm and a little damp, smelling fragrantly with the hint of something spicy. “You scared the hell out of Jarvis,” Natasha said. “He locked down your apartment like you asked, against his better judgment.”

Steve sighed, feeling exhaustion creep over him. Why was he still here, if he’d done everything he needed to do, everything he could do? “Not well enough, if you’re here,” Steve replied, the weariness clear in his tone. 

She huffed a small laugh, and Steve felt more than saw the curl of her smile as her cheek moved against his arm. “It would take more than Jarvis to keep me out of somewhere I really wanted to be. No offense, Jarvis,” she added as an afterthought.

“None taken,” Jarvis replied, his tone a little stiff. “I think you made that point quite clear.”

Steve shifted, stretching out his legs and leaning his back against the glass. Natasha settled back against him once he was still, her head in his lap. His hand came up automatically to run his fingers through her soft damp hair, gently combing through the curls. “And do you? Really want to be here?”

“I certainly got the message that you don’t, at least not any more,” Natasha answered.

His hand paused in her hair before resuming his easy rhythm. He resented her concern, her ability to cut right to the heart of the issue. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted his ma, and Bucky, and the Tony he had known from before.

He wanted the calm, and the cold, and the blue water as far as the eye could see.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Steve answered after a long pause. He could feel the rise and fall of Natasha’s chest beneath his arm, the small shifts she made as she got comfortable. She settled into his space so definitively without asking, and Steve realized he felt a little more calm with her there. The weight of having to make at least that one decision — whether she should stay or go — was lifted, and the difference was very noticeable to Steve.

“You may not feel like you can do anything about it,” Natasha answered, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”

The sigh came out of Steve before he could stop it. “There isn’t anything I can do, so what does it matter?”

His emotions had settled deep into his chest, and Steve could feel the anxiety, the grief, the loss and displacement, the fear as though they were pushing down on his heart, the way the arc reactor must feel heavy in Tony’s chest. All of his feelings were so tangled up, so tightly wound, he knew he would never find a way to untangle them. He could remember the echos of it from when his ma had died but without any of the relief he’d felt knowing that at least she wasn’t suffering anymore, that at least she could breathe easy again and her soul was free, no longer confined to the convalescent ward.

“It matters to me, Steve.” Natasha rolled over so she was looking up at him, and Steve placed his hand on her shoulder, still twisting one of her curls around his fingers. “Look, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but that doesn’t mean I have to leave you alone. I know you think that somehow that will be better — but I doubt it. And I’d rather be here with you, even if we just sit in silence. It would make me feel better, to not have to worry about you.”

Tears sprang into Steve’s eyes at her words, and he looked away from her, shame washing over him. She was still a friend, even if she was less familiar than Tony or Bucky. Steve gently pushed at her shoulder, getting her to move, and stood up. He helped her up, and she pulled him into a tight hug. “It’ll get better, Steve, I promise — it just takes time,” she whispered in his ear, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.

Natasha took his hand and guided him into the bedroom. Like the other apartments in the Tower, it had nondescript furniture with the feel of a very high-end but still very impersonal hotel room. She maneuvered him to the bed, forcing him to sit. It took a few drawers, but eventually she found pajama pants and a soft, well-worn t-shirt. Steve followed her gentle nudges without protest, and he had to admit he felt better in clean clothes. Lying down, he turned away from her and curled up with his knees to his chest. He expected her to leave and was shocked when she crawled in beside him, making a warm nest out of the covers. With a murmur, she had Jarvis turn off the lights and dim the windows. Natasha threw her arm around his chest, her fingers threading through the chain of his dog tags and settling over his sternum. She tucked her head between his shoulder blades, and he could feel her warm breath through the fabric of his shirt on the skin of his back.

For a long time, he lay with his eyes open, staring blankly across the darkened room towards the wall. Steve concentrated on Natasha’s breath against his back, following her deep, even inhalations and exhalations. It lulled him, and eventually he fell asleep, with tears still caught in his eyelashes.


	5. The Heart Still Plays Its True Part

The days passed, one indistinguishable from another to Steve. He stayed in his apartment, although he let Jarvis take it off lockdown. Natasha came in the evenings, and they would sit together on the couch, the apartment wholly and completely silent. Around midnight, exhausted but not sleepy, Natasha would guide him into the bedroom. She slept pressed against his back, and that comfort — the knowledge that she was watching over him, that she would protect him — was the only thing that allowed him to fall asleep. Jarvis gave him updates about Tony, for which Steve was very grateful. Tony had made a full recovery — as promised — and spent most of his days in his workshop.

When the assemble call came, Steve hadn’t been out of the Tower for three weeks and two days, and he’d only started venturing out of his apartment six days ago to go to the gym and spar with Natasha. Steve wasn’t surprised when she appeared in his apartment, and he reluctantly got into his uniform under her watchful eye.

“You’re going to have to move a little faster in the field,” Natasha said in the elevator as they went up to the landing pad where the quinjet was waiting, raising one eyebrow at him.

“It’ll be fine,” he answered, fingering the edge of his shield, rotating it in his hands.

Natasha shifted her gaze down to the shield, and Steve abruptly stopped moving it. He flushed when she looked back at his face and resisted the urge to look away under her scrutiny. “It _will_ ,” he repeated, but Steve knew he wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all himself.

It was easy for Steve to fall into the rhythm of a mission — a clear problem to solve, the team working together to get there. His mind focused down to that set of tasks: get to the giant, contain it so that the NYPD could evacuate the park, then subdue it.

This — This he could do.

The quinjet dropped them some distance away from the giant, and they all fell into their roles. Hulk and Clint worked on containment, trying to drive it towards the lake, with Steve and Natasha a little farther out on the periphery in case it suddenly changed directions or behaviors. Tony was in the air, watching from above. Steve glanced up, his eyes following the bright red of Tony’s suit, when a burst of green light caught his eye. He turned, the banter on the comms fading. “Wait,” he cut them off, “Loki’s near the Bethesda Fountain. Where we sent him back with Thor.”

“That can’t be good,” Tony said, and he made a sharp turn, heading towards the fountain.

Steve felt his stomach sink, his instincts screaming at him that there was more to this situation than it first appeared. Natasha materialized at his side, and Steve grabbed her arm. He clicked off his comm, glancing over at her. “I think it’s a bad idea for Tony to confront Loki by himself,” he said, and she gave a grim nod in response. “I’m going to follow.”

“He’s up to something,” Natasha agreed. She took off towards Clint, while Steve doubled back towards the fountain. He worked his way south towards the raised terrace with the intention to surprise Loki from behind while Tony was distracting him. Tony’s part of the conversation came through the comms, and Steve knew they were in trouble — that the giant was just a distraction to some larger game — when Loki starting discussing family.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Tony’s voice said in Steve’s ear. “We’re clearly a group of high-functioning, very well adjusted, very dangerous adults who happen to live in the same place. It’s practically _Leave it to Beaver_ with highly trained assassins. We’re leaving our options open to having our own reality show.”

Loki’s voice was much quieter, but Steve could still follow the conversation. “That’s not what Thor tells me — and he gets his information from Heimdall, so I’m sure it’s correct.”

“Why would he talk to you about us?” Steve could hear the surprise in Tony’s response, as well as something else: uneasiness. It was Tony’s voice he heard over the comms, but Steve knew from experience that _that_ particular inflection would be filtered out by the suit. It was never a good sign when Jarvis started making those kinds of adjustments.

“Spoken as an only child. Thor still misses his brother, the companion of his childhood. We _used_ to be inseparable.”

Steve felt his apprehension spike up. Something wasn’t right. Loki was setting them up — setting Tony up — for something, and Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that they had walked right into the trap.

“Well, prison will do that. If I blast you now, what’s the likelihood we can subdue your weird, poorly socialized cousin over there?”

Sprinting full out, Steve cursed himself as he broke through the foliage onto Terrace Drive. His mistake became obvious as he ran; Steve had taken too long to reach them by wanting the high ground. With Tony in the air, the high ground didn’t offer that much of an advantage, and Steve’s doubts increased with every step that he would actually surprise Loki from behind.

“No, I don’t think so, Stark. I know you’re used to working alone. Perhaps you could use a little perspective. A little more understanding. An opportunity to get to know your teammates a little better.”

His stomach dropped, and Steve knew — completely and without any doubts — that this was the moment. This was the moment he’d wondered about since he’d woken up here, the moment he’d agonized about and analyzed and torn himself up over. In a few seconds, Tony was going to crash land in an alley in Brooklyn in 1939, and Steve — a younger, scrawnier, confused Steve — was going to find him there.

Steve was going to find out what happened to Tony after he disappeared from his bed in January, 1940.

A frantic “Uh, guys? I could use a little back-up,” came from Tony as Steve reached the terrace.

“Almost there,” Steve answered back, running as fast as he could, even though he knew he would never made it, that he had been too slow. But of course he was — otherwise, Tony would never have appeared in that alley, and Steve would never have met him in Brooklyn in 1939.

Everything happened at once. Steve leapt off the edge of the terrace, flinging his shield at Loki. Tony took off, and his launch made him catch Loki’s green ball of light in the chest. Loki turned to look at Steve, a wide grin on his face, and disappeared the instant before the shield would have caught him in the chest. The shield clattered to the ground, scraping across the bricks like a stone skipped across water, smashing into the edge of the fountain and wobbling on its rim before coming to rest.

Steve landed heavily, staggering as he regained his footing, all of his attention on the suit. As soon as the green light hit it, the suit went slack, limbs relaxed and head lolling. The repulsers cut out, and the momentum carried it a few inches higher before gravity took over, pulling the suit back down to the ground. When the suit began to fall, Steve had to scramble out of the way, knowing even he couldn’t catch its dead weight.

The suit crashed to the ground, and Steve was next to it in an instant, rolling it onto its back rearranging the limbs to a more comfortable position. “Tony?” he cried, fumbling at the face plate. He couldn’t get it off, couldn’t figure out how to release it, and he didn’t have Hulk to help this time.

“Tony, you gotta stop doing this,” Steve said. There was moisture gathering under the cheeks of his helmet, and Steve knew he was only a few seconds from a complete breakdown. “Jarvis, can you open the helmet? Or the whole suit? Or something?” He could hear the pitch in his voice increasing with each plea, hysteria creeping in at the edges of his awareness. Steve pulled out his comm so no one else on the team would hear and ripped off his gloves. He put his bare hand over the glass that should have shown the arc reactor, like he had so many years ago.

But the light was gone, the central window in chest plate dark.

Steve bowed his head over the suit. “You have to come back, Tony” he pleaded, the tears thick in his throat, his voice catching. “You have to — I can’t do this again, and you need antibiotics and oxygen. Tony, you can’t stay there. You don’t belong there. I’ll do whatever I need to — I promise. Just come back. That’s all you have to do. Jarvis, open the faceplate — please just open the faceplate.”

He leaned down and rested his forehead against the chest plate, nothing but darkness inside the suit. “Tony, please. You gotta wake up. Jarvis isn’t responding. Tony —”

The blue light flared to life, shining through the chest plate, and the suit jerked under his hands. Steve heard Tony take a deep, gasping breath even though the external speakers didn’t transmit the sound. “Oh, thank God,” Steve choked out as Tony rolled away and onto all fours. Leaning back onto his knees, Tony released his helmet. He yanked it off and flung it away, greedily sucking in the air.

Tony looked over at him, wide-eyed, and Steve felt his own eyes widen in response. The Tony before him was the one from his bedroom, sick from pneumonia and gaunt from too little food and too much work during the Depression. Steve could see the familiar hollows at his temples and under his cheekbones, his skin pulled tight over his face. Tony’s eyes were also a little glassy, his skin sweaty, and Steve knew that if he were to touch Tony’s forehead, he would be burning up from fever.

Steve sat next to him, helping to steady him on his knees. “Jesus Christ, Tony, what the hell was that?” Steve asked, relief and distress competing in his tone.

Tony’s eyes met Steve’s, and Tony couldn’t hide the confusion there, especially from Steve. “You — don’t look right,” Tony said. He shook his head, and Steve watched him sway a little from the movement. “This isn’t Brooklyn.”

Steve wished Tony had punched him because that would have hurt less. His mouth moved, but Steve couldn’t force the air out. “Brooklyn?” Steve finally managed to get past his vocal cords. “When was the last time you were in Brooklyn?” _January, 1940,_ Steve’s mind helpfully supplied, like he might have forgotten. _A few seconds ago._

Eyes skittering away from Steve’s gaze, Tony hesitated. “I don’t remember.”

“The giant is gone,” Nat’s voice came from the speakers in Tony’s suit, “and Jarvis is telling me that Loki is too. Did you guys see what happened?”  
Steve took a deep breath to steady himself. “No. Tony took a hit to the chest,” _and got knocked back to 1939,_ “and his armor stopped working,” _because there wasn’t anyone piloting the suit._ “I didn’t see what happened after Tony hit the ground.”

“Well, that explains the headache,” Tony muttered to himself. Steve watched, his eyes narrowed, as Tony rubbed a gauntlet over his chest plate. Tony’s hand paused over the arc reactor, the metal of the gauntlet blocking out the light, and his expression shifted first to realization and then to confusion.

Tony got to his feet slowly with Steve’s help, his face pale and sweaty. They got onto the quinjet together, and Steve hovered nearby while Tony sat in the back. Steve hung onto one of the leather loops hanging from the ceiling, swaying as Clint piloted, and watched Tony. When he thought no one was paying attention, Tony would rub at the chest plate, bracing his hand against it as he coughed quietly.

Clint landed on the pad at the Tower, and he and Nat walked off with Bruce between them, riding the high after an assemble call that had gone well, with minimal structural damage and no injuries. Nat glanced over her shoulder as they stepped down from the ramp onto the pad, and Steve shook his head slightly back at her. She lifted a shoulder in a shrug, and the other three disappeared out of view from the back of the quinjet.

“I don’t think I can get up,” Tony said, his elbows braced on his knees, slumped over in the seat. His head was turned away from Steve, towards the ramp, and Steve realized he’d waited until Clint, Natasha, and Bruce were gone before saying anything.

Steve’s attention snapped back to him, and he saw a small puddle of sweat on the floor in front of Tony. Tony ran a hand through his hair, scattering more sweat onto the seat, his suit, and the floor. “I’ve never had it come on this quickly — pneumonia,” Tony clarified, the end of his sentence caught in a much stronger cough. “I know you don’t want to take care of me when I’m sick — if you could just get me to the medical wing —“

“What?” Steve interrupted, shocked. “What did you say?”

Tony lifted his head, and the exhaustion was clear in his eyes, the sweat rolling down his face and catching in his hair. He breathed heavily, struggling with every breath even just sitting on the jumpseat, and Steve realized that Tony was probably sitting like that because he was so weak he couldn’t even hold the suit upright. “You said before — you can’t do this — and I thought —“

“Jesus, Tony, I thought you were going to die. From the pneumonia. I meant I couldn’t sit there and watch you die. Not that I wouldn’t take care of you when you were sick.” Steve scrubbed a hand over his face and wondered which time he was even talking about at this point. How he could ever explain this to Tony. 

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s also the head injury. I feel pretty — confused,” Tony settled on, and he flushed even more than he already was, obviously embarrassed at having to admit he was operating at less than full mental capacity.

“Maybe we should you out of that suit,” Steve said. He crossed the back of the quinjet and squatted in front of him. Tony directed him with a combination of quiet instructions and small gestures. Steve started at his boots, releasing the hidden clasps and pulling off the front of them. Tony’s feet were bare, and a light blue cotton cuff framed one ankle, the other wadded up around his calf. Tears sprang into Steve’s eyes, blurring his vision so badly he had to duck his head.

They were Bucky’s pajamas — the last clean pair they’d put on Tony, 72 years ago.

Steve methodically stripped Tony out of the suit, each piece revealing the outfit that Steve still had dreamed about, sometimes nightmares. The cotton of the pajama pants and long-sleeved t-shirt were soaked, especially around Tony’s hips and chest where it had been pressed against him by the suit. By the end, Steve was crying so hard he was hiccuping, and Tony could barely keep his eyes open. He was hallucinating again, this time talking about a bath in the hall, asking for eucalyptus and peppermint in the water from Dum-E and telling Jarvis to get a ticket to the Dodgers game.

“Whatever you want,” Steve choked out through his tears, “I’ll get you whatever you want, Tony.” He gathered Tony to his chest, gently cradling him in his arms.

Steve took him to Medical, and this time he sat by Tony’s bed while they gave him antibiotics and fluids, unable to leave. His mind filled in the gaps from one decade to the other, from when Tony had gotten sick to now. This time, he didn’t leave, knowing that this time, Tony would die if he didn’t get better.

Steve pulled off his dog tags and put the St. Monica medal in Tony’s hand, curling his own fingers around Tony’s to keep it there. He prayed to every saint he knew, murmuring the Hail Mary and the Glory Be, the Our Father and the Final Prayer. He prayed to his ma and to Bucky. He prayed to Jarvis and Dr. Erskine, to Peggy and Howard, that someone would intervene.  
He even prayed to Loki, who had caused this whole mess in the first place.

When Tony’s fever broke, Steve cried in relief. When his eyes fluttered open, clear and coherent if still exhausted, Steve brushed his lips over Tony’s knuckles. When Tony refused to stay, Steve shook his head but didn’t argue. He could understand that feeling — Tony needed to figure out where he was, when he was.

Steve would watch over him and keep him safe, just like Tony had always believed he could.

Tony made it back to the common room under his own steam, with Steve drifting along behind to make sure he was okay. He was still in the Bucky’s clothes, and he seemed confused, picking up things and putting them back down. Steve settled on the couch, exhausted but unable to sleep while Tony was so restless, and listened as Tony puttered around the kitchen. Everyone else seemed to chalk up his behavior to the concussion, and one by one, they went back to their apartments for showers and sleep.

When it was finally just Tony and him, Steve turned off the TV and slumped down further into the cushions. He felt wrung out but still on high alert, hyperaware of Tony as he wandered around the common area. The old fear was back, that Tony would disappear again, even though Steve now had all the pieces to explain what had happened so long ago, so many lifetimes in the past.  
The smell of the peppermint drifted over to Steve, and he became aware that Tony had finally stopped moving, now standing somewhere behind his head and off one shoulder. He must have been dozing, because Steve felt groggy, suspended in that place between awake and asleep, grasping at some thought — something important — just out of his reach.

“Did you ever turn that radio on again?” Tony asked him.

The words filtered over Steve, and it took a moment before what Tony meant snapped into place. Steve’s eyes flew open, and he was on the edge of the couch before he’d consciously decided to move. “What did you say?”

Tony tipped his head to the side, his mouth partially open. He drew a deep breath, pulling himself up a little straighter, and gripped his mug, clearly steeling himself. “The radio. You listened to it all the time. And then you stopped after your mother died. Did you ever turn it on again?”

Steve felt his head swim, and he got up slowly from the couch, his legs unsteady beneath him. “Tony, when was the last time you were in Brooklyn?” A million other questions came in and out of his head, but Steve could only focus on that one, unable to ask the questions he really wanted to ask: _Do you remember? Do you love me too?_

“December, 1939,” Tony said, and he gulped, having trouble catching his breath for reasons completely unrelated to pneumonia.

Coming to stand in front of Tony, Steve ghosted his hands over the other man. He’d waited so long for this, hoped so ardently it would happen, that Steve was afraid the moment would shatter if he moved too quickly or spoke too loudly. “January,” Steve answered, and he put his hands on Tony’s hips, feeling the bones underneath his fingers, all of Tony’s fat melted away by want and infection. “It was actually January, 1940.” Steve grabbed the hem of Tony’s long-sleeved t-shirt, and Tony relaxed into the movement, letting Steve pull it over his head.

Steve just looked, awe in his expression, and his hands settled back on Tony’s hips, pulling them together just a little bit more. The blue light shown between them, reflecting on Steve’s chest and arms. Steve felt something in him unwind at the sight, elation starting to rise in his chest — this was real, and Tony was real, and Tony _remembered_. “It’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered, reverent.

His hand came up between them, and Tony nodded, his eyes tracking the movement before looking into Steve’s. Steve traced the metal casing, warm from Tony’s skin, a little sticky from the salt of his sweat. The air came out of him in a rush as he covered the arc reactor, relief and joy crashing over him like a wave, carrying him under. He leaned his forehead against Tony’s and closed his eyes, glass and metal and cotton under his hands, the smell of Tony — salt and sweat and coconut and Ivory soap — in his nose, the ghost of Tony’s breath on his face and neck.

“We never knew what happened — you just disappeared. Bucky had just come home and gone in to check on you. A minute later, he went back in and you were just — gone. I was glad he was home when it happened, because he would have never believed me if I’d told him that. He’d’ve thought I was lying to him, that you’d — died — or left,” Steve said, the words tumbling out of him. He could feel himself starting to tremble, the pent up emotions leaking out of him everywhere, in gulps and words and tears and small movements he couldn’t control.

“I would never have just left,” Tony whispered back. Tony’s hands ran over Steve’s chest up to his neck, and he felt Tony pull at the beaded metal chain. He pulled the dog tags out of Steve’s collar and held them in the palm of his hand. Tony made a satisfied noise in the back of his throat before settling them back against Steve’s chest.

“God, Tony, you were so sick, I was sure you were going to die. And then when it happened here—?” Steve choked up, the words caught in his throat. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I couldn’t watch it a second time. I thought I could — but I —“

Tony’s hands were warm on Steve’s face, and he drew him down to kiss him gently, first on the lips and then on each tear-stained cheek. Steve gasped, his tears turning to sobs. Steve pulled Tony closer until they were pressed against each other, from chest to hips to knees. He buried his face in the curve of Tony’s neck, the sobs coming faster. 

Steve was dimly aware as Tony maneuvered them both to the couch, and his legs gave out when Tony pulled away just enough to lie down. The sobs came for a long time, and Steve gave up trying to parse through all his emotions: relief foremost, and love, but also the release of fear, loneliness, exhaustion. The loss of his life and his family and his friends, his teammates and his purpose. It dawned on him that he might be able to build a life here — at least with Tony’s help.

Tony, who could build and fix anything.

The exhaustion won out, and Steve felt it creep over him. With it was the calm, like what had settled over him on the Valkyrie. This time, however — this time was better. It was the calm that came with knowing that, whatever happened, Tony would be with him. They would watch over each other and protect each other. He didn’t have to be alone any more.

The music filled the room, and Steve pictured the apartment, with the couch and his ma’s radio, the afghans on the back of the couch, the drawing table and the twin beds. It was where Tony had slept for the first time, where he’d taught Tony to darn socks and listened to the radio, where he’d showed Bucky the drawings of the arc reactor and spent his last night with him before he went to war. He opened his eyes, just a little, and saw the blue light of the arc reactor coming through the cotton.

Tony’s chest moved evenly as he breathed easily, Steve’s head slowly rising and falling with every breath. He kissed Tony’s chest gently. He settled, content, and closed eyes again. He could be happy here — as long as he and Tony were together.

(★)

Epilogue

It was a beautiful summer day, the wind blowing in off the ocean, when they left Malibu in Tony’s R8 and drove east. The air cleared as I-15 carried them out of the LA Basin through the San Gabriel mountains. Eventually the green pines and craggy cliffs gave way to desert. The wind blew sand across the interstate, and Tony and Steve stopped in the ghost town of Halloran Springs to argue about whether to put up the roof. Steve won, insisting that it wasn’t a proper road trip if you couldn’t feel the wind in your hair, and Tony conceded less than gracefully, grousing under his breath about sunburns and better living through the technology that was air conditioning.

Tony kept up a steady patter during the ride, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Steve half listened, looking out over the desert around them. The last time he’d passed this way, he had taken the longer, southern route to the Grand Canyon. Somehow, the northern route — through Las Vegas with the Hoover Dam only 45 minutes away — had seemed like something that belonged to Tony and Bucky, given how many hours they had spent discussing the dam’s architectural features, the structural wonder of how it had been built, how much power it generated and how much water it held back, and the changes it had wrought on the landscape by forming Lake Mead.

Steve looked over at Tony and smiled. Tony’s left arm draped along the door, fingers tapping contently in time to the music playing over the radio, every so often his hand lifting up to emphasize a particularly salient point as he talked. His right hand draped over the top of the steering wheel, and the wind whipped his brown hair into a mop of messy curls, constantly buffeting it around. His sunglasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, and Steve could see his reflection in the lenses when Tony glanced over.

“What are you grinning at?” Tony stopped mid-stream about water rights in California and how inefficient the current system was.

“I’m just — happy,” Steve finally settled on after a pause. “The last time I came here I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders — specifically you, Buck, and Ma. But now — I feel —“ He trailed off, trying to find the right words.

“Like you can breathe again?” Tony supplied.

Steve narrowed his eyes. “Like life is full of possibilities, and they’re all mine for the taking.”

“They don’t pay you by the word — I don’t need the bond salesmen spiel,” he answered easily. “How did it go? ‘Each bond is a bullet in your best guy’s gun.’”

“I can’t believe you found that. I could have just given the pitch to you, you know. I still have it memorized.”

Tony threw back his head and laughed. “Howard collected everything — and I do mean _everything_ — even tangentially related to Captain America. He would have bought your image and the shield design from the US Government if he could have. He got in an epic argument with them about it, because he’s the one who designed it, in case you forgot. Which I never was given the opportunity.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “You got the line wrong. It’s ‘Every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun.’”

“Close enough,” was Tony’s only reply.

“I was trying to have a moment here. Of how different my life is now, one year later. How much better, because of you.”

One of Tony’s eyebrows rose above the frame of his sunglasses, and he glanced away from the road for a long moment before turning back. “You’ll be 28 tomorrow, doll,” he smirked, mimicking Steve’s Brooklyn accent. “Of course your life is good.”

Steve punched him in the arm. “You sound more like Buck than me when you do that. They tried to drill it out of me for the bond show.”

The laugh was quieter from Tony this time, and they lapsed into silence. They drove on, the lights of Las Vegas shimmering in the distance even in the middle of the afternoon. “It kind of feels like he’s with us,” Tony offered, glancing back over to Steve.

Avoiding Tony’s gaze, Steve ran his finger along the rubber seam of the door. That earned him a nudge from Tony’s elbow, and Steve looked up to find Tony studying him between glances at the road. “It’s okay to feel like he should be here,” Tony clarified. “We certainly talked about this trip enough.”

Steve swallowed around the lump in his throat, his eyes suddenly watery. Tony shifted his hands so he was steering with his left and gripped Steve’s thigh with his right. “He woulda liked this,” Steve husked out, his voice rough around the edges. 

“Especially the car. And the house in Malibu,” Tony added as an afterthought. “You’re allowed to be happy here. He’d want that. And you can do things you thought you’d do with him. He’d want that too.”

“Natasha talks too much,” Steve said, looking back out over the desert.

Tony huffed out a laugh. “Now, we both know _that’s_ a lie.”

“I guess I just never thought I’d get this, you know?” Steve blurted out. He waved his hand out beyond the car’s edge, taking in the world beyond. “I thought I might have it with you, before, but then you disappeared. And then maybe after the war, but that — disappeared too. I guess I just never expected to have this.”

“Life in the future with a superhero boyfriend who flies around in a suit he designed himself based around a piece of hardware that keeps him alive? Me neither,” Tony answered. “Of course, my version is a super soldier boyfriend who was born in 1918 that I inexplicably met in 1939 after I’d already met him in 2012.”

“I give up. I can’t have a serious conversation with you.” 

Tony tipped his head back, looking over his shoulder towards Steve. “But do you want to?”

Steve gently swatted at the back of his head, and Tony laughed again.

They drove down the Las Vegas strip before Tony pulled into the circle drive of the Venetian. Steve grabbed their bags while Tony tossed the keys to the valet. Once in their suite, Tony shed his sunglasses and shoes, pouring himself a glass of the chilled San Pellegrino left out for them. He offered one to Steve, who waved him away. Steve walked out onto the balcony looking west out over the fountains in front of the Venetian, across the Boulevard towards the Mirage. 

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t think I could have this either,” Tony said, continuing their earlier conversation as if they’d never left off. He handed Steve a glass of sparkling water, which he took automatically, taking a long drink from it before realizing what Tony had done. “I had Pepper, but only for short time because she didn’t like the whole risking your life thing. I have Rhodey, but it’s not the same. And then I had you, in the past. It just turns out I need both you _and_ antibiotics.”

Tony reached his glass over, and Steve obliged by clinking the rims together. “And maybe you still drive me crazy sometimes, with more convictions than I am tall and an ass that just won’t quit. Sometimes your pride seems to beg for someone to arrange the fall that’s supposed to cometh after — and if someone is going to make you cometh —“

“Trust me, I know, and I appreciate that,” Steve cut him off dryly. 

“Anyway,” Tony continued good-naturedly, “you gave me some of the best months of my life — but if you ever tell Loki that, I’ll be forced to kill you.”

“Or him.”

“Or him,” Tony echoed. “I think what I’m trying to say is tomorrow you turn 28. We’ll go to the Hoover Dam and see Lake Mead, just like Bucky and I talked about. And you can check that off the list for him. We check all the things off the list for him. We’ve got time. But it’s not just for him. We’ll do it for you too. Because you have a life here now. And that’s yours, and nothing will take that away. Just don’t crash any more planes in the Arctic, okay?”

Steve put his glass on the ledge of the balcony and pulled Tony close, burying his face in his neck where it met the shoulder. “I’m not going to make promises I’m not sure I can keep,” he said, his face still buried, and Tony laughed when Steve’s breath brushed across his skin.

“Well, if you do it again, I promise to find you faster this time. Ten, twenty years tops.”

Trailing kisses up Tony’s neck, Steve wrapped his arms around him until Tony’s head fell against his chest. Steve buried his nose in Tony’s hair, closing his eyes and enjoying the scent of hot metal, coconuts, and hair product, with Tony beneath it all. “Thank you for bringing me here,” Steve said softly, his breath stirring Tony’s hair. “Thank you for letting me do this for him.”

Tony pulled away just far enough to look up at Steve. “I’m the one who promised him we’d do this some day,” he said, suddenly serious. “We’re both doing this for him.”

In the middle of the night, Steve was restless, unable to fall asleep, even with Tony was sprawled across Steve and the bed. Steve disentangled himself, walked back out onto the balcony, and looked out over the Strip, the neon lights chasing themselves around buildings, pools and fountains of every color, water spraying up in front of the casinos. He shook his head, marveling at how he’d gotten here: from a tenement building in Brooklyn, where he both found and lost Tony, to Camp LeHigh, back to a basement in Brooklyn where he’d become Captain America. The bond show that took him to every major city in America — including Las Vegas — then the front in Europe. The Alps, where he lost Bucky. Back to New York in 2012. Across the country again, only to find Tony — really find him this time — in Central Park.

He was grateful for his life, for the loves he’d felt so strongly and deeply. With Tony, he’d finally settled into a fulfilling existence, no longer so painfully alone. Natasha had settled in as the best friend he hadn’t realized he was looking for. He had a team with the Avengers, more family than he’d ever known growing up.

Memories of the apartment still came upon him, unbidden, but they were tinged with fondness now, instead of loneliness and regret. Tony had even found him a radio somewhere like his ma’s.

Reaching into his pajama pocket, Steve pulled out the slim silver band with a small emerald set in it. His ma had told him it was the only piece of jewelry she was able to bring from Ireland when she fled after fighting in the Easter Rising. He’d carried it with him ever since Tony had given it to him. The St. Monica medal was his to wear for the rest of his life, and the calla lily pin he’d given back to her, a token of her time in the _Cumann na mBan_ , fighting against the British Empire for her country.

But the wedding band? It had seemed neither his nor hers, instead more a remnant left over from her years with Joseph, who may have loved her but had never done so particularly well. It reminded Steve of his ma’s bravery, of her unwillingness to be consumed by her husband’s alcoholism, of a particularly nasty past that had helped shape her into the woman he had known. The talisman representing the ashes from which she’d risen after his death.

Steve inspected the band, gently scuffed from wear. His ma would want him to give it to someone important, someone who would understand what it had meant to her to bring it with her after she’d fought in Ireland, what it as like to carry difficult memories that were impossible to forget. Tony of course would appreciate the significance and the gesture, but he wouldn’t particularly like it or want to wear it.

There was always Natasha though.

She was his first friend here, his confidant and consolation in those first painful months. Her posture always reminded Steve of his ma, with her quiet grace and unexpected strength. It was hard not to think of his trip a year ago and the ghosts that had followed him. Tony was here now, no longer a ghost. They would lay at least a piece of Bucky to rest tomorrow at the Hoover Dam. And it felt to Steve like his ma had sent Natasha to take her place, to watch over him, to kick his ass when he needed it and pick him up when he couldn’t do it himself.

Steve slid the ring over his index finger, and it was only wide enough to brush against his first knuckle. Natasha would understand his ma’s desire to fight for her country, the pain of her defection to America, her insistence at always getting back up regardless of what her alcoholic husband had done to her, her willingness to stand up for what she believed in, which she passed on to her son. 

Tony appeared at Steve’s side, sleepily leaning into his space. Steve slid his arm around Tony’s waist, pulling him close into his warmth. “Remember this?” Steve asked, showing him the ring.

Tony took it off Steve’s finger and inspected it. “I had no idea what to say to you when that doctor gave me all that stuff. I was just supposed to drop off a letter.”

“Yeah, you got the raw end of that deal,” Steve said. “I think Natasha might like it.”

Considering the ring, Tony nodded slowly. “From what you and Bucky said, they were probably cut from the same terrifying cloth. I wish I had gotten to meet her.”

“Me too.” Steve sighed, leaning his head against Tony’s. “This is both easier and harder than I expected.”

“That sounds about right,” Tony answered. “Come to bed and let me help you forget for a bit.”

(★)

They left early the next morning, taking the road that overlooked Lake Mead before arriving at the Hoover Dam. They parked on the Nevada side and walked out onto the dam until Tony was standing in Nevada and Steve in Arizona, looking out over the bright blue-green water. They went on the dam and power plant tours, although Tony spent most of the time in the back muttering about how dumbed down the engineering explanations were. Steve spent a long time looking at the topographical map from the 1940s with the original exhibit building on it. They ended the day on the Bypass Bridge that overlooked the dam.

“Bucky would have been impressed,” Steve said as he leaned against the railing.

“He would have sassed us the whole time,” Tony answered. “I don’t know about what — but he would have found something.”

“Let’s go home tonight. We can drive back to Malibu and take the jet to New York,” Steve said suddenly, reaching over to grab Tony’s arm. “I don’t know why, but I want a funny movie and popcorn with everyone else.”

Tony had already pulled out his phone and was typing on it. “Sounds good to me, but I can do you one better. The jet can meet us in Las Vegas and take us home. I’ll get someone to take care of the car.”

“You mean Pepper will.” Steve had already turned away from the view, running a hand through his hair. 

Glancing up from his phone, Tony paused in his typing. “You okay there, Spangles?”

Shrugging, Steve looked around, and Tony narrowed his eyes in response. “That’s your tactical assessment look,” he said suspiciously. “You’re looking for threats and exits.” Tony mimicked the gesture, but there was nothing to see. There were a handful of people on either side, vacationing families, couples, and a few people who were alone, but no one who looked suspicious. There was nothing else around them, nowhere for a sniper to hide or somewhere an assailant could surprise them unless they jumped out of a car.

“Something just feels — off,” Steve answered, shaking his head. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Yeah. Nothing. Just the instinct that keeps you alive because you’re a fucking super soldier. I bet you’re right, nothing’s trying to kill you and, by association, me right now.” Tony looked around one last time, but the scene was just as picturesque and unremarkable as before. “I didn’t bring the suit, just so we’re clear.”

“I know,” Steve said, and they started walking back to the R8. “I told you not too.”

“Last time I listen to you.” But the walk back to the car was uneventful. They got in the R8 and pulled away from the parking lot, Tony making the tires kick up gravel while Steve craned around to take one last look at the bridge and the dam.

A man stood alone on the bridge, watching them as they walked across the bridge back towards the parking lot. He had long dark hair that hung in his face and a leather jacket that was surprisingly warm for the day. He tailed them, staying a long distance away, ambling slowly and taking time to pull out his phone, snapping pictures of the dam, the river, and their license plates. After the R8 pulled out, he straddled a motorcycle that was also in the parking lot. A metal left hand grabbed the handlebar, and he gunned the custom throttle on the left with it before dropping the motorcycle into gear, releasing the clutch. The motorcycle roared, and the tires caught. He pulled out onto the access road and followed the R8 back to Las Vegas.

His orders had been clear — they were always clear: to return back to San Francisco, to the chair and the tank, so they could put him back in cryostasis once his mission was completed. But when he’d seen these two at the airport, something had seemed off. The further he got away from the cryo tank and the chair, from his handlers, from the mission — the more his instincts troubled him. The two men were — familiar, for lack of a better term — and the soldier wasn’t used to that feeling. Nothing was supposed to be familiar — the chair made certain of that. And so he’d broken off and not followed his orders.

So he stalked them, and he watched them, and he thought about them as he rode back towards Las Vegas. And as he followed the R8, the sun continued to sink lower, the late afternoon shadows lengthening out behind the two vehicles until the shadows of the two men in the convertible blurred into his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I thought this was done, but obviously my brain had other ideas. But good news! As of posting, I have 18,428 words written for the next (last?) story! I'll post it as soon as it's within striking distance of being done. Thank you all for the love for this story and the series!! I appreciate it so much!!


End file.
